


A Thousand Times Between Our Eyes

by skitzofreak



Category: Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016), Star Wars - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Everyone Lives/Nobody Dies, Angst, Comfort, Explosions!, F/M, Humor, K-2SO (briefly), Mission Fic, Nightmares, Ocean Planet, Panic Attack, Pining, RebelCaptain Secret Valentine, Romance, Spy Stuff, Tea, Trust, Turf wars, Unresolved Sexual Tension, big damn kiss, choosing function over fashion doesn't mean we can't still be fashionable, interrupted kisses, series-typical violence, smugglers, the importance of a carefully planned wardrobe, thoughts about kisses, thoughts about relationships, thoughts about survival, touch starvation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-14
Updated: 2018-02-18
Packaged: 2019-03-18 05:03:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 27,363
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13674798
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/skitzofreak/pseuds/skitzofreak
Summary: His left hand was still clamped tightly on the back of her jacket (his jacket), but his right hand reached up and pushed at a thick lock of her hair as it drifted across her face.We’re okay,his eyes told her.We’re going to make it.-Cassian and Jyn go on their first mission together post-Scarif, and are completely professional at all times. Of course.





	1. if I stumble and fall

**Author's Note:**

  * For [sempaiko](https://archiveofourown.org/users/sempaiko/gifts).



> For @sempaiko, as my part of the Rebelcaptain Secret Valentine Exchange. The prompt was: "first kiss keeps getting interrupted, but they finally do get their moment... eventually" with preference for an in-universe setting, and they gave me a few other secondary "favorite tropes" that I made an attempt to fit in as well. I hope you enjoy this! Happy Valentine's Day!
> 
> -
> 
>  "We are all broken. That's how the light gets in."  
> \- Ernest Hemingway
> 
> _Forgive me_  
>  _if I stumble and fall,_  
>  _for I know not how_  
>  _to love too well._
> 
> _I am clumsy_   
>  _and my words do not form_   
>  _as I would wish._
> 
> _So let me kiss you instead,_
> 
> _And let my lips_  
>  _paint for you_  
>  _all the pictures_  
>  _that my clumsy heart_  
>  _cannot._  
>  \- atticus

“Objective achieved!” Alban crows in Cassian’s earpiece, his grin obvious in his voice.

“Maintain opsec,” Cassian mutters in response, and glances over his shoulder at the crowd, searching for the flame-red shock of hair that his mission partner refuses to cover up. (“Hats are uncommon in this part of the galaxy, mate,” he claims, “better to be a mite visible than be out of fashion.”)

(“You’re not _a mite visible_ ,” Cassian retorts, “you’re an orbital flare gun. I could see you from space.”)

“So young to be so cranky. You’ll have wrinkles before you're thirty, kiddo,” Alban chuckles fondly, which is odd, given that this is the first time Cassian’s ever been assigned as Alban’s partner, and there is no reason the man should like him much. Cassian hasn’t exactly been pleased about this assignment, and he’s not particularly been stretching himself to be pleasant and accommodating.  It’s not just the first time he’s ever been assigned as Alban’s partner, it’s the first time he’s ever been _anyone’s_ partner. He usually works by himself, but Mon Mothma had been making a lot of significant comments to Draven about such a young operative always being sent out alone, and despite Cassian’s best attempts to be good enough to operate solo, Draven has apparently caved. Cassian’s not happy about it, but he doesn’t protest either.

“I’m on your six,” Alban drawls in that thick accent of his, “No tails, and path to the port is clear as the space between your ears. We’re going to make it, mate.”

Cassian shoots another glance around, but it appears that Alban is right, and no one has marked or followed him. He feels his shoulders relax, his heart rate start to even out for the first time since they landed on this heavily-patrolled Imperial planet. His blaster is tucked securely under his shirt, and if it comes down to it, Alban is supposedly a crack marksman. No alarms are sounding, no emergency vehicles are screaming by, and no ‘trooper patrols are marching up the streets (yet, not yet, all that will come soon, when the payload Cassian left in the drone factory goes up in a tower of flame, but he’ll be long gone by then).

“Steady on,” Alban chuckles again, “slow your pace, you look like your tryin’ to shake off the school-master after skippin’ class.”

Cassian scowls at the pavement beneath his boots. “I don’t look _that_ young.”

Alban laughs in his ear, “No, no, ‘course not, that peach fuzz on your chin makes you look a right grandad. Steady on, mate, and keep your face still,” he adds in a lower voice – wherever he is, he’s seen the ‘troopers who have just turned down the street right next to Cassian. “Drop your shoulders, good man.”

Cassian forces his narrow shoulders to relax and takes a long, slow breath, remembering to loosen his jaw and let his eyes go slightly unfocused. Alban’s voice is still light and calm, soothing in it’s way, and the man chats to Cassian amiably until he’s past the stormtroopers’ watchful eyes and passing through the gate of the space port, where their shuttle is only a few more steps away. 

Working with a partner isn’t terrible, Cassian supposes.

“Well, this has been a bang up day,” Alban says cheerfully, his voice a little louder, and Cassian thinks he hears heavy footsteps coming up behind him, even in the crowd. “You did a grand job at the old bolt stop, and I - ”

“Talked constantly,” Cassian mutters, but Alban remains unfazed and laughing.

“And you're very welcome for it, my little storm cloud,” he appears next to Cassian, tall and red and laughing, always laughing. He slaps the younger operative on the back with a meaty hand and nods towards their shuttle. “See, I told you we would make it. Here we are, home, sweet, home.”

Cassian opens his mouth to grumble that if he has a home, it certainly isn’t this rickety old shuttle with a loud-mouthed wanker (‘wanker’ being one of Alban’s favorite cuss words, Cassian’s learned, and rather than being offended, he’s generally delighted to hear it in Cassian’s accent). Before he can speak, however, a mechanized voice snarls through the air “Halt! Rebel scum in the port! You there! _Halt!”_

In the back of Cassian’s mind, a quiet voice mutters, _it didn’t happen like that,_ but there’s no time to think about it. The air cracks and sizzles with a sudden storm of blaster fire, the crowd in the port erupts into screams as they scramble to escape the deadly hail, and Alban shoves Cassian forward so hard he nearly falls.

“Go, boy!” the older spy bellows over the rising cacophony, “go!”

Cassian lunges forward, his heart hammering again in his chest, his eyes stinging with smoke, his insides writhing with terror – but then his brain catches up and he realizes that Alban isn’t behind him, has turned back, has pulled his blaster and is darting to the side – “come on, you cross-eyed piss-drinkers! Fuck your shitty aim and fuck the Emperor’s wrinkly arse and _fuck every one of you!”_ – firing wildly into the oncoming ‘troopers, drawing their attention in the opposite direction.

He’s supposed to run – he has the higher security clearance and the evidence of the bomb’s materials are in his fingernails and the insides of his pockets, he is the bigger target, the bigger threat to Alliance security – but he can’t. He can’t leave Alban, can’t run away and let a good man die ( _he can, he did, where is this noble nonsense coming from?_ ). No, he won’t leave. Cassian draws his own blaster and turns to fire at the ‘troopers chasing Alban. He’s young but he’s talented and he’s put in hours and hours in the targeting range, so one, two, three ‘troopers drop in as many seconds, but there are more, there are always more, an endless tide of gleaming, merciless white. A panicking civilian slams into Cassian’s shoulder and sends him crashing into a nearby wall, but he shoves himself back up and raises his blaster again, another ‘trooper, another, and now they see him, now the pitiless black eyes turn to track him as he stumbles through the shrieking mob. Alban sees him too, and suddenly his voice in Cassian’s ear is louder than everything else, drowning out the howls and screams of the crowd, the relentless drumming of a thousand booted feet, the pounding of Cassian’s heart. _“NO!”_ Alban’s rough voice bores into Cassian’s ear, knocking him askew, unbalanced and staggering through the madness. “No, Cassian, get out! Get on the fucking shuttle and _get out!”_

“I can’t leave you behind,” Cassian gasps, firing, firing, more white-armored bodies drop but more keep marching towards him, endlessly marching, but he can’t leave. ( _But I did_ ) Another shot, another body falls, and another, another. ( _I did leave him behind._ _I turned and I got on the shuttle and I flew away and Delmak Alban died alone, gunned down by stormtroopers to save me.)_

“No,” he grits out between clenched teeth, and to his horror his hands begin to shake, his aim wild and uncontrollable, useless against the incoming tide. His hands never shake on the op, never when there is a blaster in them. This is wrong. It’s all wrong. “I can’t,” he gasps, but he’s no longer sure what he means.

“Yes, you can,” Alban says in an oddly calm voice, “You must. You have to make it, mate,” he laughs suddenly, and Cassian looks away from the advancing wall of white to stare incredulously across the seething port because how is he _laughing?_ Alban is sprawled on the ground, his chest as red as his hair, his smile frozen and his eyes empty, but still he turns his head and looks Cassian right in the eye and says, “Somebody has to make it,” and there is red on his white teeth, red on the white armor of the ‘trooper filling Cassian’s vision, red of the blaster bolt that comes screaming for his heart –

 

Cassian woke up with a jolt. He lay on his back in his bunk and stared at the featureless grey ceiling of his bunk, distantly cataloguing his body’s reaction to the nightmare – sweaty skin, pulse too quick, breathing too light, hands twitching with residual fear. A quiet, detached part of his mind wondered why he was dredging up memories nearly a decade old. The rest of his mind replayed the look on Alban’s face when he vanished in a rolling cloud of grey smoke.

 _You have to make it, mate_.

Cassian sat up and rolled out of the bunk and shoved his feet into his boots, methodically tightening the laces with a sharp tug and pushing himself to his feet. From there it was only two short steps to his sink, and a quick scrub of his tired face and gritty teeth. The water came out in a thin, fitful spurt – the water lines in the Yavin temple ruins were a patch job, added to the ancient stone buildings by people who were better at shooting than they were at plumbing – but it was cold and clear. The small, chipped mirror above the sink reflected a slightly blurred image of his face in the dim light of the room. Cassian glanced up as the water dripped down his stubble, and noted the thin post-bacta scars on his face, skewed over his right ear and fading down into his collar. He didn’t really remember the wound (he didn’t really remember most of his Scarif wounds, not with clarity) but Jyn’s lips tended to thin out when she glanced at the right side of his face in strong light, so he knew it had been bad.

Jyn.

In his head, Alban stared blankly at the sky and laughed through bloodless lips. _Someone has to make it_.

That was been the last thing Cassian’s first (and last) partner had said. After that, Cassian refused to be assigned a permanent partner. Historically speaking, teams tended to last longer in the rebellion than lone operatives, but he didn’t care. Command hadn’t liked it, Medical had liked it even less, but Cassian – so obedient in everything else – had dug his heels in. He didn’t need a partner. He had K2SO, and the occasional colleague brought in to assist on various operations. If time permitted, Cassian made an effort to be friendly with them all, because operational efficiency and security increased with goodwill and rapport built between the team members – and some of them were good people – but in the end, they would always shake his hand and go their separate ways.

Or die, of course.

Cassian grit his teeth and shoved that thought – and Alban’s voice – firmly into the back of his mind. He was starting a new operation today, and he needed to focus. Thinking about past failures would not help.

Someone knocked on his door, a sharp, perfunctory rap that was more warning than request. Cassian blinked at himself in the mirror, and then despite the cold weight of the dream still sitting in his belly like a stone, he saw his lips twisting up into a smile.

“Come in,” he called softly, although the door was locked – just to see what she would do. There was a few seconds of silence, then a faint scraping sound, and then his door slid open. Jyn stood framed in the doorway, the fingers of one hand curled up under his doorlock and partially buried in the wiring, and her other hand brushing against the holster that hung at her side. Her hair was shoved into a practical bun, though various ragged locks escaped to frame her sharp cheekbones and sharper eyes. Her loose hair also, Cassian noted with a grim sort of approval, partially covered the thin post-bacta scars that scored down her cheek and jawline, her marks a faint mirror to his own. She wore sturdy, dark clothes, scuffed steel toed boots, and a worn but thick shirt, a wide leather belt and holster, and had at least three knives and one boot-blaster tucked throughout her ensemble. Her outfit made her look like an Outer Rim worker, someone sensible and hard-working and totally uninteresting to the casual observer, so long as they didn’t look too close.

Her eyes, on the other hand, shone green and wild, and hid more sharp edges than her clothes.

The cold rock in his gut turned warm as he looked at her, and expanded up into chest, simultaneously banishing the last dregs of the nightmare and shoving all the air out of his lungs. Jyn raised an eyebrow at him, pulled her hand out of his doorlock, and then stepped through the door smoothly, just in time to avoid the snap of the metal as it immediately clanged back into place now that she was no longer holding down the override switch. She didn’t so much as blink, looking at him steadily with a faint smirk playing around her mouth. The warmth in his chest spread a little wider.

“Nice,” he nodded to the door.

“Your lock sucks,” she said, her eyes bright with cautious humor. “Old, cheap, and still has the factory-settings.”

“I’ve only had the room a few days,” he shrugged and forced himself to turn back to the sink, reaching for a comb to tame his sleep-wild hair into some semblance of order.

Jyn took a step closer, which in the small confines of his narrow quarters brought her within touching distance. Cassian kept his eyes firmly on the mirror and told himself not to think about it. It wasn’t that he didn’t _want_ to touch her, it was just…

It was just that he kept _noticing_. People stood within arm’s reach of him all the time, whether he wanted them to or not, and the part of him trained and honed by years of war marked them as “threat” or “non-threat” and then he went about his business. Jyn stood close to him, and half his brain started calculating the exact distance between her shoulder and his until she stepped away again. People pushed past him in the corridors of the base, or forced him to step aside to avoid the collision, and Cassian paid them only the detached attention of a man used to dodging. But the day they had walked out of medical together after Scarif, Jyn’s hand brushed once across the back of his, and for a few seconds his entire world had pivoted around the thin line of skin where they had touched.

“So,” Jyn said, tossing her head slightly to flick a lock of hair from her eyes. “Mosiya.”

“Arms dealer based out of Pillio,” Cassian supplied dutifully, filling her in on the details of their upcoming mission that he had researched last night. “No confirmation of species, but we think Human. Not the only supplier in the system, but definitely the biggest, and the most dangerous.”

Jyn nodded, her hair drifting back slightly against her forehead at the motion. Yesterday, while they were getting their current assignment from Mon Mothma, Jyn had absently brushed a lock of hair back behind her ear, and his fingers had literally twitched. He shouldn’t even have seen her move, certainly shouldn’t have wanted to do anything about it, but he did and he had. He’d seen, and he’d wanted to turn around and reach out, right there in front of Mothma herself, and trace his own fingertips along the path Jyn’s had followed. The urge had been so powerful, he’d been forced to bite the inside of his cheek until it bled and focus all his attention on keeping his breathing steady and calm. It was the sort of thing he’d done undercover, when his documents or his backstory was under scrutiny and the risks of discovery (and death, or worse) were high. And here he was, standing in his own headquarters and fighting to keep the sweat from breaking out on his forehead and the pounding of his heart from being heard by every sentient within a twenty meter radius.

Jyn gave him a measured look, her nose wrinkling slightly as she contemplated their upcoming task. “And we have to somehow find them without making them think we’re incoming rival smugglers. People like that don’t get to power by being open-minded.”

“No, but if the rumors are right and Mosiya is willing to contract with us,” Cassian packed his few toiletries up into a small, neat pouch, all ready to shove into his pack and carry onboard their ship. “It could be a huge asset to our fighters.”

Jyn nodded, her face solemn but her eyes bright and unguarded. She did that when they were alone, he’d noticed; not at first, but the more they were together, the more Jyn tended to drop the typical wariness from her eyes and her spine. He tried not to read too much into that, not yet, not when they had only known each other for barely two months. He wanted to, though. He wanted a lot of things, lately, and most of them had to do with the woman watching him prep for their first official (sanctioned) operation together.

He knew what this was, of course. Intelligence operatives had mandatory psych evals every half-year, and he had clearance to read his own. He didn’t understand some of the more complex medical terminology (and didn’t really want to; some things he was just better off not knowing), but _touch-starvation_ was pretty self-explanatory. As was _social isolation_ and _depersonalization_. His favorite diagnosis had been on his last psych eval, not two months before Operation Fracture had exploded into a race against the deadliest weapon known to the galaxy and Jyn Erso had consequentially been dropped into his lap, filthy, starved, and half-feral. _At risk for negative mental stability and dementia,_ the interviewing doctor had written under the “Impact to Operational Readiness” tab on his evaluation form. There had also been a three-page dissertation on Rebel Intelligence’s general tendency to throw “the injured and unstable members of their division into increasingly unacceptable circumstances without regard for their condition,” which Cassian was reasonable sure was meant as a direct insult to Draven, who had somehow managed to piss off Command’s Chief Medic and all his staff. Cassian had almost laughed when he read the vitriolic language of his evaluation, which ended with a ludicrous recommended treatment: _reduction of isolating factors and promotion of a healthy social support network_. He had closed the document, walked down the corridor to where he knew Draven was also reading the same file, and when he’d walked in, neither man had mentioned it. What was there to say? They both knew the war was killing him. It was killing them all. There was nothing to be done about it.

But somehow, despite the galaxy’s best efforts, the war hadn’t actually killed him, at least not yet. And these days, against all expectations, that _healthy social support network_ didn’t seem like such a crazy pipe dream.

 “Ship is ready,” Jyn said quietly, leaning against his wall and folding her arms loosely around her middle as she watched him put away his comb and scratch at his chin, debating whether or not he needed to trim his beard down today. “Kay is probably standing guard on it.”

The beard was fine, he decided. He could neaten it when they arrived at their destination. Cassian turned to the small closet next to his sink and rifled through the clothes he had hanging there. “Is someone trying to steal our ship?” He glanced aside at her, and tried not to fixate on the way her smile sharpened. “Or is he concerned it will fly away without us?”

“He’s concerned that it will fly away without _him_.”

“He already knows it will,” Cassian shook his head. “He can’t come on this one.”

Jyn nodded, but her head cocked to the side and her voice took on a carefully neutral tone. “He’s not happy you’re leaving him behind.”

Judging by the lecture Kay had given him last night in the mess hall, “not happy” was a bit of an understatement, and the laughter dancing behind Jyn’s eyes told him she knew it, too. Cassian turned back to this closet and told himself to stop wondering what her smile would feel like against his skin. “So he mentioned. Loudly. And repeatedly.” He rifled through his possessions carefully, determined to distract himself. He owned very little – when he went on an extended op, he took what he needed from the quartermaster and returned it afterwards – but he had a few things he’d picked up out in the galaxy and kept for himself. He left the blue parka where it hung. Pillio had a night cycle that was twice as long as the day cycle, and those nights were cold, but it was also an entirely aquatic planet, and the humidity there would cling to the fur of the parka and leave it feeling sodden and heavy all the time. Cassian could handle being damp, and he could (mostly) handle being cold, but being wet and cold at the same time invited far too much misery.

“There’s a pretty good chance he’ll just stomp onboard and refuse to get off,” Jyn commented, and in the corner of his eye he saw her lift a hand to her collar, her fingers wrapping loosely around the small stone that hung against the hollow of her throat. It occurred to him suddenly that she wasn’t wearing her gloves – that he hadn’t seen her wear them at all in the two months since he’d woken up in the medward, aching and disoriented and desperate to know if she was alive, if anyone was alive. “He’ll have statistics. Calculated scenarios. If we’re really lucky,” her mouth pulled into a sharp grin, dragging his eyes from her hands to her mouth for a brief moment before she relaxed back into the small half-smile, “he’ll have _charts_.”

“I do love a good chart.”

Jyn snorted. “Who doesn’t?”

“Pillio is too close to Vardos,” Cassian said a little absently, pulling out a thick grey woolen jacket from the back of his closet. He would not stare at her bare hand, or the pale skin at the base of her throat just above her curled fist. Instead, he tossed the woolen jacket behind him on the bunk. Wool resisted saturation, and it stayed warm even when it was wet. Jyn would need something warm and water-resistant too, and Cassian had a wool sweater that he hadn’t worn in a while, a little torn but probably still good. If he could only remember where he had stashed it…

“Strong Imperial presence in the Vardos system,” Jyn agreed lightly, watching him open his tightly packed emergency duffel bag and dig through the contents.

“Too strong a presence. The locals keep up to date on Coruscant fashions. An older model security droid like Kay will call attention.”

“He’ll say he can just wait on the ship.”

Cassian rolled his eyes. “Ah, yes, because he has an excellent track record of doing _that_.”

Jyn laughed softly under her breath, and Cassian swallowed hard and half-hoped she couldn’t see it (half-hoped she could, because he figured she knew his secret anyway and maybe it would be easier than speaking, easier than acknowledging out loud how badly he wanted - ) “He knows that," Jyn interrupted his rapidly scattering thoughts, wrenching him back on track. "You know he’s still going to try and talk his way into the op.” The clear stone flashed between her fingers as she rolled it slowly, clearly not paying much attention to what her own hands were doing as she watched his shuffling through his clothes. There was a thin but distinct band of scar tissue around her exposed wrist, the mark of shackles locked too long around raw skin. Even her recent immersions in bacta hadn’t done much to fade the marks that Imperial prison had left on her.

“Where are your gloves?” Cassian asked abruptly, trying to shake the urge to reach over and curl his fingers around her boney wrists, the urge to lift them to his mouth and press the scarred skin to his lips. It wasn’t that he believed she would be offended or angry if he did. Waking up to Jyn’s face after Scarif had strung an indistinct but fierce hope throughout his bones like a fine, golden wire – someday, he would reach out and kiss her scars, and she would smile and reach back – but now was not the time. As of yesterday, they were both medically cleared for operations again, but in many ways they were both still healing, and this quiet thing that had begun growing between them almost the moment they had met was still new and fragile and (if he was honest with himself) a little overwhelming.

“Medical burned them,” Jyn said after a small pause, then she shrugged a little too casually and added, “too bloody.”

Cassian grimaced. When it came to Scarif, his memory tended to…well, he didn’t really remember much, not after a certain point. A beach, a golden sunset burning the horizon with a terrible and endless hunger, and Jyn’s pulse beating slow and steady against his lips where he pressed his face against the curve of her neck with his eyes closed and his mind empty of everything but the certainty that this was all he could have ever hoped for, all he would ever have, and then –

Afterwards, however, when he had woken up with stitches and burns and synthetic vertebrae, he had read the medical reports. His clothing had been so saturated in blood, vomit, and various “unidentified substances” that Medical had simply cut them off and thrown them in the incinerator. Jyn’s had been, by all accounts, just as bad. It hadn’t occurred to him that her gloves might have been beyond saving, too – now that he thought about it, it had probably been _his_ blood coating her hands, saturating the worn fabric as she dragged his broken body through the fires of Scarif.

He remembered very little of that part, but he recalled telling her to leave him behind, or trying to, anyway. And he remembered with crystal clarity the tone of her voice when she had refused.

Cassian glanced at her hands again, and then carefully stowed those memories with the rest, out of focus and unable to distract him.

If she hadn’t replaced the gloves yet, then the quartermaster probably didn’t have any her size. He resolved to get her some new ones on Pillio. Meanwhile, Cassian had finally found the second woolen sweater, and frowned a little as he saw that the rip was bigger than he’d recalled.

“That for me?” Jyn pushed off the wall and took another step towards him, her eyes on the sweater. She was close enough that he could lean to the side and brush against her. Cassian stood straight and held up the dark green wool.

“It is, but it’s no good,” he pointed to the long tear down the side. “I meant to get it repaired.” He shrugged, folded the sweater back into a loose square, and tossed it back into the closet. “We’ll have to stop by the quartermaster again.”

“It’s not that big of a tear.”

“It’s longer than my hand, Jyn.”

“And no one will know it’s there if I wear a jacket over it.”

Cassian shook his head. “I’ll know,” he said, mostly just to keep the conversation going. He liked the easy back and forth, the way he didn’t have to analyze her every vocal nuance or carefully select every word before he said it. “Can’t have you out in a ripped outfit.”

“Why not?”

He shot her a grin, pushing fruitlessly through the last of his clothes in the hopes that he might find another sweater that he had forgotten. No such luck. “You're a bit behind the times. The grunge look is out of fashion,” he joked, and tried not to be too pleased with himself when she huffed a short, soft laugh.

“Warmth is always in fashion, Cassian.”

He opened his mouth to respond, but then Jyn leaned around him, her shoulder pressing warm and solid against his arm, and the words vanished somewhere between his head and his mouth. She grabbed the sweater off the shelf, examining the tear with a critical eye. She smelled like gun oil and cheap soap, and a lock of loose hair fluttered lightly against the soft skin on the back of her neck only a few inches from his face when he looked down at her. Cassian held himself very still until she pulled back, holding the sweater up before her. “It will be fine,” she repeated decisively. “Just needs a jacket.”

Wordlessly, Cassian reached into his closet and pulled out the first light jacket that met his hand. It was the dark leather jacket he wore to grittier, working-class planets like Taris or Kafrene – he hadn’t worn it since…Tivik, he thought with a faint pang, but he moved to shove it back into the closet a moment too late. Jyn reached out and plucked it from his hand without comment, and swung it around her shoulders. “That should work.”

A small piece of Cassian noted that while the jacket was clearly too big; the dark leather accented the sharp lines of her face and the fierce set of her jaw, making her look more intimidating rather than less. It concealed her body but marked her subtly as a threat; people would go around her on the path, or step out of her way. That sort of attention was faint but definite, and bystanders were more likely to remember her passing by, if anyone should ask. The clinical assessment warred in his head with the realization that the warmth in his chest was expanding again, seeping through his body and sending little sparks along that golden wire of hope. She was wearing Cassian’s jacket, and looking like someone who could just as easily melt into the shadows as she could crack open a man’s skull, depending on her mood. And should someone attempt to attack him or put him in binders, he knew with a sudden sharp clarity which of those options she would choose. _She stayed, she’s staying,_ the little voice whispered in the back of his head, she was wearing his jacket and standing by his side. The words kept flashing through his mind, as if he were flipping a coin in his hand, over and over – _she stayed._

All of that, however, was drowned by the acute awareness that when Jyn had pulled on the jacket, she had shifted her weight even closer to him. He had unconsciously turned to face her and now…

“Hm. This looks like it will blend in with the Pillio general crowds.” Jyn eyed her own front for a long moment while Cassian tried to decide if he should shuffle back or not. Before he could choose, Jyn looked up, and he watched her eyes widen and her breath catch slightly as she suddenly realized exactly how close they were standing. “And it - ” she paused, cleared her throat softly. “And it makes me look like someone the gun runners would be willing to deal with. Gangster, or something.” Her lips quirked up into a small smile again, and Cassian’s fingers curled into fists against his legs. “Someone hardcore.”

“Yes,” he murmured, wondering if she could hear the slight roughness in his voice that he couldn’t seem to swallow back. “Very tough.”

The silence stretched a moment too long; he could see her noticing it too, see the uncertainty in her face. Uncertainty, but – his own breath caught a little, his heart speeding up – not fear. Cassian was looking for it, too, all his years of reading faces and body language, all his experience with terror and pain and hatred brought to bear as he swept from the faint lines around her eyes (soft, not tight with tension), to the corners of her mouth (relaxed, curved slightly up), to the set of her shoulders (down and back, firm but not rigid). His sweep brought his gaze back to her eyes, and the look in them sent a long, slow roll of liquid heat down his spine, and made the itch in his fingers almost unbearable.

She was not afraid. She was…she was looking at him like he mattered, like she was glad to see him, like she was pleased to be standing here with his jacket wrapped around her and his body only a short step from hers.

Like she was happy to stay.

It occurred to him that he wouldn’t even have to step forward, if he wanted to kiss her. He’d only have to lean down, tilt his head just a little to one side, and if she tilted hers just a little to the other side, he might finally know how she tasted. He might know what it felt like, to kiss someone purely because he wanted to, with no motive or expectation beyond the simple joy of it. 

“Good,” Jyn murmured. Her eyes narrowed slightly, and turned entirely too knowing. Would she smile like that if he kissed her? Would she push away, or stand still, or pull him in closer if he dared? He had a theory on that, but...She tilted her head to the side exactly as he had been imagining a moment before and oh, Force, all he had to do was dip his head and he might find out for sure. Jyn's breath brushed soft across his cheek as she added wryly, “You know that I won’t wait for you on the ship, either, right?”

He almost laughed again, because _of course_ she had figured out that he wanted to keep her stationed on their ship, keep her hidden and safe as possible while he walked through the heavily-Imperial aligned planet. He would never even suggest it, and it would be stupid and wasteful of him anyway considering her capabilities and experience. But some irrational piece of him wanted so badly to try, because she was strong and smart and beautiful and the world didn’t let him keep things like that, didn’t ever let him keep people like Jyn or Alban or –

 _Somebody has to make it,_ the tall man shouted with blood on his teeth, and Cassian’s throat closed up like a fist clamping down on his windpipe, his heart pounded like a hammer trying to shatter through his ribs, and the humor in Jyn’s eyes evaporated as she registered the sudden pallor of his skin.

“Cassian?” She reached up towards his cheek, her hand stalling uncertainly a bare few centimeters away. Cassian could hear his breathing suddenly loud and harsh in the stillness of his quarters, his pulse in his ears and his hands shaking as adrenaline and fear coursed through his veins. Now the lines around her eyes were tight, the corners of her mouth pinched, the muscles of her shoulders hard with fear. Slowly, she stepped a little back, pulling back her hand – the logical part of him knew that she was backing off, giving him space to breath, but the memory of Alban plunging to the duracrete in a haze of smoke and ‘trooper armor screamed that she was _leaving –_

Cassian jerked forward and caught her hand before she dropped it entirely. He pulled it back up and pressed her bare palm against his cheek, and even through the haze he watched her face like a hawk, ready to drop her fingers, ready to step back and turn away and give them both space if that’s what she needed.

Jyn curved her fingers almost gingerly against his cheekbone for a moment, and then the hesitation vanished; he could actually see the moment she made the decision, her lips pursing slightly, her chin tilting up in that defiant certainty. And then she stepped right up to him and cupped her other hand around the back of his neck, not pulling him down, but holding him steady.

Cassian closed his eyes and leaned into what she offered, pressing his forehead to her temple, letting the frantic fear wash through him, forcing himself to breathe through the shaking of his hands and the racing of his heart.

“I’m sorry,” he whispered when the worst of it had passed, when the thunder of his heart faded to a quieter drumming and his hands finally stilled. The terror receded slowly but it did recede, leaving him feeling light headed and brittle but functional.

The sour taste of shame spread across the back of his tongue for a brief moment, but Jyn turned her head slightly against his cheek, just enough that he could feel the faintest brush of her lips against his skin, and he forgot to be embarrassed as she said in a soft but determined voice, “Happens to me too.”

Cassian squeezed his eyes a little tighter closed, and heaved a sigh that he knew must have ghosted down her whole back, because Jyn shuddered slightly and her hands tightened on his cheek and neck. He knew what those words must have cost her, what a confession of any weakness meant coming from a woman who spent her life hiding every possible chink in her armor.  It was a gift, as precious as the feeling of her skin on his, and Cassian held himself still and breathed through the joy of her presence just as carefully as he had through the fear of her loss. Jyn turned her head again and stayed still against him, her hands steady and warm, her breath a feather-touch against his jaw and neck. He couldn’t stand here and soak it in forever, he knew…but he could for a few more minutes. Just a little longer.

His comm chirped, and he didn’t quite managed to stop his startled flinch. Jyn shifted minutely in response, but didn’t pull away.  The comm chirped again, shrill and insistent. Cassian ignored it for a few more seconds, but he had long been conditioned to respond to that call as quickly as possible. He pulled back and unclipped it from his pocket without opening his eyes, not ready to deal with whatever expression was on Jyn’s face.

“Andor,” he managed in as clipped and professional tone as possible.

“You are scheduled to launch in twenty standard minutes,” K2SO said primly, his voicebox just on this side of disapproving. “But you have not yet arrived at the hangar. If you do not begin your start up sequence within the next ten minutes, you will not depart on time. I suggest haste.”

“Understood. Thanks, Kay.”

"It is not really a suggestion," Kay clarified, and Cassian smiled slightly as Kay disconnected without further comment.

“Told you he was waiting by the ship,” Jyn said a touch smugly.

Cassian opened his eyes and looked at her, uncertain of her reaction, uncertain of how he would handle it if she were mocking or (worse) pitying him.

Jyn had the torn wool sweater draped over her arm, and his grey jacket in her outstretched hand. He thought her face looked a little pink along her cheekbones and her lips were pressed together just a little too tight – but whether that was to suppress a smile or a frown, he couldn’t tell. Her stance was alert but relaxed, though the wariness she displayed out in the world beyond his quarters nowhere in evidence, and she was still just inside his arm’s reach. If he stepped forward again, he had a hunch that she wouldn’t step back. Most importantly, she looked at him exactly as she had looked at him for the past two months, the way she had looked at him in the stolen shuttle to Scarif, standing before a squad of desperate rebels and leading them into bloody battle. She looked at him like an equal, no more or less a soldier or man because of the cracks in his control, all the places that life had fractured and remade him. This was why he had insisted that the mission packet listed her as his partner rather than his subordinate, because that's what she was, seniority and rank be damned.

 _You have to make it, mate,_ Alban said again in his memory, and for the first time, Cassian realized that under the raw fury and bitter laughter, there had also been a kind of relief in the dying man’s voice. Cassian hadn’t been assigned with Alban for very long, but he knew that the older operative had cared about his younger partner, done his best to look out for him. His sacrifice had been for the sake of the data, for the sake of the rebellion, true – but it had also been for _him_. Because _someone has to make it_ , and Alban had made sure Cassian did.

Cassian took the grey jacket from her hand, and grabbed his duffel from the floor. Jyn flashed him a quick smile and turned on her heel to march out the door. _She will_ , he told the fading ghost of his first (but not last) partner.

_If it’s in me at all, she will._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In case it is unclear, this takes place roughly 2 months post-Scarif. I have the whole thing written, and will post a chapter a day.
> 
> [Pillio](http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Pillio) is a completely ocean-covered planet, in the same system as [Vardos](http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Vardos), which is a major Imperial planet. Very little is mentioned about Pillio’s structures, cultures, or planetary cycles, and you know what that means: free-for-all worldbuilding! 
> 
> “Mosiya” is a Swahili unisex name for “eldest child,” or so the internet tells me.


	2. how to love too well

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _"How dangerous, she thought, to finally have something worth losing."_
> 
> \- [Blossomfully](http://blossomfully.tumblr.com/post/102046960805/how-dangerous-she-thought-to-finally-have)

-

The problem, Jyn decided as her jaw tightened and her hands flexed restlessly, was that everything was going so well.

Not that she wanted things to go wrong. The docking clerk checking them in at one of Pillio’s commercial space ports had barely glanced at their meticulous documents as she signed them in, and Jyn had been relieved her forgery work was still good enough. They had caught the public deep-water train up to the Midnight Market and ridden the entire twenty minutes with nothing more exciting than the strands of bubbles streaming in complex patterns past the bulging viewports. Nobody had even stood too close or looked at them too long, and Jyn had been both amused and pleased by the way Cassian’s shoulders relaxed into the small empty space around them. And now they walked through the famous floating market itself without even catching sight of a stormtrooper patrol. The weather was clear, the crowds were large enough to hide in but small enough that they weren’t being constantly crushed or shoved around – hells, even the local stickyfingers seemed to sense that Cassian and Jyn were poor targets and kept away from her well-guarded pockets.

The market itself was beautiful, too. It was a “topsider” structure, built to float across the surface of Pillio’s dark, gentle seas in a loosely-organized web of glass and steel. The various open-air shops floated on their own individual little islands, while flexible networks of semi-transparent bridges connected them all, lit with blown glass lanterns that changed color depending on the types of shops they led to. The strands of lights on the bridges melded with the brighter, more centralized lights of the shops and reflected back in the smooth black water below, and in some places, where the surface lights were fewer or dimmer, she could just make out the faint glow of the glittering seascrapers submerged deep under the water. Above her head, the starlight competed with the market lights to brighten the darkness, and the air was only just cool enough to make her grateful for her wool sweater and jacket (Cassian’s sweater, Cassian’s jacket, but that wasn't really important right now, no matter how… familiar? calming? nice? sure, _nice_ …that it smelled).

At her side, Cassian leaned casually against the intricately latticed but sturdy metal entrance of a jewelry-smith. He was focused on the married pair of Rybet jewelers that Rebel Intel had listed as ‘possible vectors’ to their target. The merchants had made an initial attempt to sell Jyn some gaudy-looking earrings, but she gave them a flat stare and turned to watch the crowds as Cassian stepped in to intervene, because schmoozing people was Cassian’s job on this op and watching for threats was hers. Ten minutes later, they were falling over themselves to chat with him about the local price of kelsh-plated bracelets (a gentle probe - Mosiya was known for using kelsh-plated crates to hide smuggled weapons). Cassian looked relaxed, calm, a pleasant man out for a shopping trip with his spouse, nothing remarkable about him. Jyn had a feeling that his calm was mostly true. After all, things were going well. The Rybets were talking to him like he was an old friend, and from the little light in his eye, he was getting exactly what he wanted from them.

Not that Jyn was staring at her partner's eyes – she was new to the Alliance, but this sure as shit wasn’t her first rebel party, so she kept her gaze on the streets (bridges? connective surfaces? _whatever_ ) and scanned high, level, low. No tall buildings with possible sniper perches or ambush overlooks. No threats on the surface level. No threats in the water - as far as she could tell, which wasn’t much. The water made her nervous, and she glowered at it the most. The ocean failed to cower at her displeasure, but at least nothing had yet dared to pop out and take a swipe at her. In fact, nothing seemed inclined to swipe at her from any direction, and to her irritation, the apparent lack of danger was making her more nervous than a walk down the back-alleys of Corellia. Jyn found herself gritting her teeth again.

Possibly, it was just that Jyn hadn’t been in a place like this for…a long time. Even before Wobani, before Yavin and Jedha and…well, before her life had flipped upside down and inside out, she’d tended to stick to places that didn’t have well-lit passageways and chain-store caf shops on the corner. Across from the jewelers’, a Gree broodmother smoothed a tentacle over her smallest hatchling’s breather-mask, the other four adolescent Gree chirping and dancing impatiently until she led across the nearest bridge to some kind of toy shop. Faint chiming music filtered through the crowd; Jyn guessed that the dancing troop a few islands over had finally finished their set up and begun their street act.  The Midnight Market was mostly clean and surprisingly pretty to be classified as "low-end." But then, this was "low-end" by Imperial Core World standards. Her idea of low-end tended to involve a lot more dark corners, unwashed bodies, and piles of trash. Jyn glanced at the discreet trashbin tucked into the side of the jeweler's shop and grimaced. Visible trashbins, gee, what a slum. She'd known it was more upscale than her usual haunts, but it had been so long since she'd worked a job outside of the Colonies or Outer Rim that she had forgotten the standards were so different further inward. Even the people here seemed cheerful and weirdly clean, and the atmosphere in general was so fucking peaceful that the terrible civil war currently raging across the galaxy seemed not only distant, but almost laughable.

No wonder Pillio was so staunchly Imperial.

“Perhaps,” one of the Rybets croaked behind her, “your companion would find use in a soothing tea?”

Cassian’s hand was suddenly on her shoulder, a gentle touch that somehow managed to settle her defensive hackles while also lighting half her nerves ablaze. The side of his index finger just brushed along the line of her collar against her throat. Jyn squashed the sudden (and completely idiotic) urge to roll her shoulder down and back, stretching her collar aside and letting his fingers slip against the exposed skin of her throat. That was just – for fuck’s sake, she was in the middle of a crowded street, on a clandestine mission for a rebellion against a massively oppressive government that would crush her to a pulp if she were caught. Possibly literally. This was not the worst time possible for her hormones and fantasies to flood through her brain, but it was pretty damn high on the list.

His hands were ridiculously warm, smooth from a life of clandestine work but with just enough light callouses from life as an operative to scrape across her skin (and make her wonder what they might feel like against the rest of her - _damn it_ ).

 _Get_ , she told herself acidly, _a grip_.

“Thirsty?” Cassian asked in his bland talking-in-front-of-a-mark voice, and Jyn turned to stare at him. His hand was still warm and pleasantly heavy on her shoulder, but she was not paying it any attention, because that was stupid. She also wasn’t measuring how far her face was from his, because that was _incredibly_ stupid. Just behind him, the Rybets were watching her with what almost passed for polite expressions on their amphibious faces, except the larger female’s eyes were just a little too beady as she took in Jyn’s braced feet and ramrod-straight spine. Shit, she was being too obvious, aiming for “disinterested” and coming off as “aggressive.” Two months of medical leave had made her rusty. Or perhaps it was the six months in Wobani that had screwed up her social gauge.  

Cassian’s amiable tourist mask was still firmly in place, but his hand was just a little too tight on her shoulder. He was worried – which meant she was probably throwing off his conversation with the Rybets. She needed to bring her rioting emotions to heel. She needed to calm down, step back from him, and let him get on with his part of the operation. She needed to stop glancing down at his mouth.

He nodded to a small shop just a few meters away, just at the head of a small bridge with fewer lights than the rest. A delicately blown glass tea cup flickered in greens and browns over the open-air counter, behind which a thick-set Human was weighing out packets of tea on a silver scale with solemn intensity. “I could use a drink,” Cassian went on, still in that calm voice. “Would you mind?”

Walk away and leave him alone and vulnerable in a strange place? Yes, actually, she minded a great deal. On the other hand, she was fucking up his op for no good reason, and anyway, it wasn’t like the man was defenseless. His blaster was tucked firmly under his thick wool jacket, his lockpicks were on his ankle, and he’d allowed her to slip a small dagger into his inner pocket just before they’d disembarked (and smiled at her when she did, his lips curving up and his eyes soft and quiet as he looked at her, which had thrown her for a bit of a loop because people typically did not look at Jyn like…but anyway).

“Sure,” she said a touch more brusquely than she meant, and stepped deliberately away. Cassian’s hand slid off her shoulder slower than she expected, and contrary to all sense, that loosened the tight knot in her chest somewhat. He wasn’t any happier to send her away than she was to go. It shouldn’t have helped, but it did. Jyn marched down the street, resolving both not to look back at him, but also not to walk out of his line of sight, if she could help it.

The scents of the tea shop were faint from across the street, but as she walked up, a small cloud of scented steam curled up and around her, earthy spices and sharp fruit smells filling her senses. She supposed the rather dramatic cloud was part of the advertising – the blown glass sign informed her that this was The House of Steam, Pillio’s “finest purveyor of sensory delight.” It worked hard to live up to the name, too. Most of the market smelled oddly sterile under the sea-smell, the result of many air purifiers set up at regular intervals throughout the structures. Either there were no filters anywhere near this tea shop, or the owner actively worked to overcome them. The temperature near it rose a few degrees, too, even though the whole shop was little more than several decorative metal pillars around a centralized counter, with a small section curtained off along the back of the shop, near the water. The heat came from a dozen tall braziers set up behind the counter, each one topped with simmering pots of varying designs. Most looked pretty standard, but a few had no spouts at all, and one particularly strange one had three. A heavy pot of cast iron was literally bound to it’s brazier with chains. Probably Wook Lo Kat leaf, Jyn thought dismissively, a popular tea among Wookies seeking an energy boost and among anyone else seeking to end their earthly troubles. 

Speaking of Wookies - the Human male working the tea shop counter seemed almost comically large as she drew close. He was roughly Cassian’s height, but probably four times her partner’s weight. Jyn paused a few steps from the counter and eyed him carefully. He looked like a bodybuilder who had retired and let himself go a little. The roundness of his stomach under the small blue apron was probably misleading, though, and she definitely shouldn’t drop her guard because of it. Saw used to call that kind of build “hard fat,” and punching it felt like slamming into a brick wall covered in a thin layer of rubber. The sleeves of his shirt were stretched tight around clearly defined muscles, his nose had been broken and reset multiple times, and the black tattoos on his bald head did little to hide the myriad of old scars that covered his scalp and plunged down the back of his thick neck. His hands, when she glanced down to check, were just as calloused and battle-marked as her own. And the way he stood behind the counter, his feet braced and his chin tilted down just slightly, was the stance of a man used to being ambushed.

 Interesting. She was looking for a criminal empire hidden in a shopping district, and here was a guy who practically screamed “hired muscle for underground, shady shopping experience.” That didn’t necessarily mean he was involved with the right kind of ‘shopping’ that she was looking for…but it might not be a bad place to start. On the other hand, she might be jumping down the garbage chute and straight into the compactor if she prodded this guy.

Investigate, or play it safe?

Jyn stepped up to the counter, and the thick-set man looked up at her with an expectant expression. She held his gaze, and her silence, for a long moment, waiting to see how he would react. He stared placidly back, unmoved. There was another series of small black and blue tattoos on his right fist, just under his knuckles. Castellan numbers – now why would he have _that_ on his hands? Slowly, the man unrolled his fist and laid it flat on the counter, making it easier for her to read the marks. Jyn refused to bite her lip or widen her eyes in response. So he’d caught her looking? So what? She wasn’t going to give him a reaction. Casually, she looked back up at his expressionless dark eyes. “Tally marks,” she said. “Fights?”

“Kills,” he replied in the same conversational tone.

The marks on his hand added to over thirty in Castellan counting. “Why the knuckles?” It was a strange place to put any significant marks; every time he split his knuckles, he risked a scar that would mar the clean lines of the tattoos. No scars on his knuckles meant he preferred alternate means of fighting, maybe armed, maybe not. If she got in close, she could probably land the first blow. It would have to be a hell of a hit, though, because his retaliation would be devastating.

“Kills with my hands go on my hands,” the big man shrugged. It was like watching a small tsunami rise up out of the ocean and then sink back down again.

“Nice,” Jyn leaned a hip against the counter and let her hand drift to her hidden holster, fingers light as a butterfly on the pocket of her heavy leather jacket. Cassian’s jacket. Cassian was roughly ten meters away with his back exposed to the street crowd. If a fire fight broke out behind him, she knew he would react quickly, but would it be quickly enough?

She should probably stop poking at the giant murderous thug. On the other hand, their leads to Mosiya had been lukewarm so far. “So, same principle at work up there?” she jerked her chin up at the black marks covering most of the man’s thick skull.

His heavy, scarred lips rolled upwards into a slow, happy smile. “Yes.”

Well, shit.

She could still take him. Probably.

Hm.

“Shackles,” the big man said, and Jyn held very still as his eyes flicked from her neutral face to the thin sliver of skin visible between her sleeve and the gloves Cassian had tucked into her belt while she was slipping a knife in his. The scars from her time in Wobani were faded now to a pale silvery band, and since she rarely bared her arms under ultraviolet radiation, the pallor of her skin tended to make them hard to see even without her sleeves and gloves to hide them. All the same, the big man behind the counter looked from her wrists to her torso (where the concealed blaster rested against her ribcage), to her face again. His expression didn’t change, and Jyn worked to make sure hers didn’t, either.

“Good eye,” Jyn said mildly. Big Guy leaned forward slightly, balancing his mass on his toes. All that bulk might slow him down a bit, but the change in stance told her that he knew how to smash like a hurricane through anything that got in his way. He would be slower than her, definitely, but not as slow as he looked, and he would carve a path a parsec wide if he chose to chase her.

There was a heavy platter full of tea samples on the counter just within her reach. One of them might well be the Wookie tea, which burned like acid on Human skin. At the very least, the rest of the samples looked scalding hot. If she moved fast enough, she could fling the tray in Big Guy’s face, which would buy her three, maybe four seconds - time to clear the tea shop. Five to ten seconds to reach Cassian from there. The jewelers’ counter was thick, and they probably had an emergency metal grate they could drop to deter thieves, another ten seconds for that to clang into place. It… _might_ hold him back, if he charged it. It would give her time to draw and fire, anyway. She’d probably have to go for the eye, a small target, but if she missed, Cassian wouldn’t. Of course, then they would be trapped in the jeweler’s cage, sitting ducks for whatever enforcers showed up to deal with the fracas.

Okay, new plan. If she jumped up on the counter and stomped her heel down on his nose, she might buy herself enough time to dash down the nearby bridge, leading Big Guy on a berserker rage away from Cassian, who would know to meet her at the -

“Herbert!” A lilting voice called sharply. “Herbert, what have I told you about scaring the customers! You bring shame to The House of Steam!” A delicately patterned teacup whistled through the air and bounced off the big man’s skull. He didn’t blink, but his huge, tattooed hand shot out and caught it before it could fall to the floor and shatter. A moment later, a small engine whirred, and a wizened Gossam female rose slowly up on a little motorized platform next to the counter. The Human mountain’s expression didn’t change, but he slowly dropped back onto his heels, a tsunami receding back into the ocean.

“She’s not so easily scared, Mama,” he said quietly. “And she has a blaster.”

 _Mama_. That explained the Castellan tattoos. Castell was the Gossam homeworld, and it looked like the meat mountain here had somehow gotten himself adopted into a Gossam tea-merchant family, and then moved with them to open a nice shop on a floating market on Pillio. The galaxy was a fucking _weird_ place, sometimes.

“Half the population has blasters, dear, and I don’t want you picking fights with them, either,” the old lady told Big Guy tartly. “It’s uncivil, and you will be civil in my shop, thank you.”

“Sorry, Mama.”

“Put that cup away, dear, and don’t crack it.” the little Gossam woman folded her blue hands neatly on her lap and regarded Jyn with a shrewd gaze. “You must forgive Herbert, young lady, he loves to tease.” She shot an unreadable look at her son, which bounced off him as easily as the thrown tea cup. “Of course,” she added, swinging her pale eyes back to Jyn’s face, “you _did_ come in here armed, and as high strung as a fathier on race day.”

Jyn shifted her weight and waited silently. The Gossam woman seemed harmless, but she clearly had control over Big Guy, and this was her turf. Worse still, Jyn couldn’t read her body language, or her milky blue eyes. She had never worked with any Gossam before, either as a Partisan or as a fugitive. They tended to live on the wealthier, more Imperial planets, where she didn’t often go. If Cassian were here, he would probably know exactly what sort of vibe the old woman was broadcasting, and how to respond. But he was still behind her, and she would be thrice damned before she turned around and looked across at him right now, not with these two watching her. Better to hold her tongue and play dumb.

A handful of teenage Humans shuffled in, laughing and elbowing one another. The Gossam’s calculating eyes went bright and cheerful immediately. “Good evening, good evening! Gentle waves to you all! How may we be of service? Herbert! The sampler plate! And _you,_ miss!” The Gossam raised one gnarled finger and pointed it directly at Jyn, arresting her quiet attempt to slip out into the street crowd. “I will assist you personally, if you please.”

It was funny, Jyn thought with an ironic smirk, because those words _sounded_ like a request, but only to the untrained ear. Still, she took another step back, standing on the tiled line that marked the shop’s ‘interior’ from the bustling street. The Gossam eyed her a moment longer, while behind her, Big Guy weighed and measured out tiny tea filters for the chattering kids with the air of a man doling out precious gold to courtiers.

“Is there nothing I can help you find?” The old woman tapped her fingers on top of her knees, a gesture of impatience in a Human, but in a Gossam, who knew?

Jyn raised her chin defiantly, and the Gossam’s wrinkled brow lifted in…uncertainty? Surprise, maybe. Then her eyes, originally milky blue, suddenly turned a muddy yellow color, and while Jyn had no idea what _that_ meant, the calculation going on behind them was clear as the lights of the Midnight Market. _If you’re thinking of siccing your boy on me_ , Jyn thought, _give it a go. See if it works out the way you think._

“I don’t need anything,” she said aloud, her voice dismissive and her body poised to run.

Something warm and solid at her back – Cassian _. Body language_ , Jyn cursed herself, he must have seen her body language and known she was facing a threat. He had walked up right behind her, too, his chest just brushing the back of her shoulder. He wanted the Gossam to know that Jyn wasn’t alone. A mix of warmth and exasperation rolled through Jyn – he was backing her up, but he was painting a target on himself to do it. _Nar tal nemec_ , she was going to read him the _riot act_ when they were out of this. Or possibly kiss him senseless. She hadn’t made up her mind yet.

 “Nothing?” The Gossam asked in a voice just barely loud enough for Jyn to hear. “Are you certain?”

And then she held up a little metal disk, hardly wide enough to cover her palm. The disk was copper-colored and so shiny it looked permanently wet – kelsh-plating -  and an image was stamped on the surface, a rolling wave curled in on itself.

Mosiya’s symbol. Well. Maybe the Rybets hadn’t suggested she get a cup of tea just for the soothing effect, after all.

Behind her, Cassian shifted forward, his fingertips resting lightly on the small of her back, although whether that was to steady her or himself, Jyn wasn’t entirely sure. “Gentle waves to you, Shop Master,” he said politely, and if he were even slightly thrown by this sudden development, he didn’t show a flicker of it. Jyn felt a flash of pride for him, which was stupid because she had nothing to do with his adaptability or intelligence. Over her shoulder, she could practically feel his pleasant-tourist smile lighting up the evening. “Perhaps you can help us find what we seek. If we could have a moment of your time?”

“See, Herbert?” The old Gossam chuckled and tucked the metal disk away with a flick of her quick hands. “ _That_ is what civility sounds like. Take notes.”

“Yes, Mama,” Herbert replied, handing the last cup of steaming tea to the last teenager and nodding politely when she dropped her change in the small jar on the counter.

“Come _on_ , Sienna,” one of the other teens called impatiently. The teenager waved at her friends, then shoved rudely past Jyn and Cassian with a vaguely contemptuous glance at them both. Jyn resisted the urge to roll her eyes. Brat.

Cassian didn’t step forward again, and he didn’t push at her back with his hand, but Jyn could feel that he wanted to move closer to the Gossam. Personally, she was all in favor of keeping as much distance as possible between them and the clearly dangerous strangers, but if she didn’t move, he would go alone. Jyn stifled a sigh and strode back to the counter, her right hand blatantly on her jacket pocket and her left subtly bending to loosen the knife tucked up her sleeve from it’s secret holster. Cassian attempted to step around to her side, between her and Big Guy, but it would be a hot day on Hoth before she let _that_ happen. The teenagers were already veering off into the street crowds, and no one else had come up to the counter, so Jyn didn’t bother too hard with subtilty as she darted around Cassian and planted herself directly between him and the other Human. If it came to it, she’d shoot Big Guy in his massive chest and flip the knife at Mama Gossam’s large yellowish eye.

“The sencha green, please, Herbert,” the shopkeeper Gossam said politely, snapping boney fingers and pointing imperiously at a nearby pot. Her son obliged, lumbering close and pouring out three small cups of fragrant greenish-yellow tea into an ornate wooden tray. The old woman patted his broad cheek with a fond hand when he set the tray on the counter between the three of them. “Mallow sweetener? Milk?”  

“No, thank you,” Cassian replied, picking up the nearest cup. Jyn gave the old woman a flat stare, which bounced off her like dried peas, so the rebel reached out and gingerly plucked her own cup from the tray. There was no way in all the many hells she was going to actually drink the stuff, but she could at least go through the motions. The shopkeeper loaded her own cup with sweetener, and then took tiny, precise sips as her enormous son stared at them all with hooded eyes.

“Gossip or goods?” The old woman asked after a few moments of silence, punctuated only by the murmur of the crowds outside.

Cassian took a small sip of the tea, ignoring the warning glare that Jyn shot him. “Pardon?”

“Are you looking for information, dear,” the Gossam repeated carefully, regarding him over the rim of her cup, “or are you interested in something more…substantial?”

“Ah,” he smiled politely, took another sip, and Jyn clutched her cold fingers around her own warm cup to stop herself from smacking his out of his hands. If that cup had something in it that would incapacitate him – well, she would kill Big Guy first, Mama Gossam second, and burn this shop to the waterline. If it killed him, she would…she would…

Jyn glared a little harder, and set her jaw.

“So, gossip, or goods?”

Cassian tilted his head thoughtfully, and then in a casual voice replied, “Grandmaster.” His smile stayed relaxed and pleasant, but Jyn saw his eyes turn sharp, trained on the old Gossam’s face as he watched for her reaction. Behind the woman, Big Guy shifted his weight, rocking just slightly forward on his toes again as he focused on Cassian like a hunting hound scenting prey. Jyn mimicked the action, training her own gaze pointedly on Big Guy’s jugular. After a short beat, the tattooed man glanced at her from the corner of his eye, and settled slowly back to the balls of his feet. Jyn waited a moment longer, just to make her point, and then settled as well. Cassian and Mama Gossam never broke eye contact, but the old woman sighed slightly into the silence and shook her head.

“Quite a fierce spouse you have, young man,” she said at last. “A dangerous person to cross, I think.”

“Yes,” Cassian said, and under his calm detachment there was a hint of pride that sent a faint flush through Jyn’s skin. “She is.”

“Well, you seem like such a nice couple, and I hate to disappoint a customer.” The Gossam lady laughed, a high whistling sound that seemed to fade and loop inside Jyn’s ears, like a distant bird call echoing through a rocky canyon. Jyn blinked and shook her head slightly, until the sound faded. Did Gossam have some sort of bio sonar? Was the old woman scanning them? “I will,” the Gossam continued, “send up a good word for you, but I will promise nothing. After all, you are, shall we say,” she clapped her hands sharply together, then rested them on her knees again, “unproven.”

“We would appreciate that,” Cassian said mildly, draining the last of his tea deliberately and then setting the empty cup gently on the counter. It was a message, a sign not of trust but of confidence; the Gossam would not harm him, because he was a friend who came with peaceful intentions. With, of course, the subtext that if she _did_ harm Cassian, he also had confidence that someone would make her pay for it.

He was right, but that didn’t mean Jyn had to like it.

“Come back soon, dear,” the old woman said brightly, fluttering a wrinkled hand at him and smiling with a full row of serrated teeth. “It was so lovely to meet you.”

Jyn leaned forward and set her untouched tea cup down next to Cassian’s on the counter, and swept both the Gossam and her giant son with a long, flat stare. Big Guy returned it. Mama Gossam’s teeth flashed in the glowing shop lights. “Have a nice evening,” she said brightly, and her whistling laughter followed Jyn out into the street.

“It’s a start,” Cassian murmured when Jyn pressed up against his arm to avoid a group of scowling workmen, who shoved past them both and busied themselves with a lamp post next to the tea shop. Across the street, the Rybet jewelers had closed, their metal bars down and locked. Behind Jyn, the sound of grinding gears announced the tea shop’s own barred walls coming down to close it off from the street. The crowd had thinned even further – it was the middle of the extended night cycle, and traffic was at its lowest. The only people within several meters were the workers, the Gossam and her son, and a gaggle of teenagers hanging out near the northernmost bridge.

She shot Cassian a sideways look. “You shouldn’t have drunk it.”

“It was a calculated risk.” He turned and headed down the street toward the north bridge, leading her back to their ship and hopefully a few hours of sleep before they headed off to the next possible lead on their list. “I think Mosiya is unlikely to kill everyone who comes looking for them. That would be bad for business.”

Jyn tried not to grind her teeth. “And if you calculated wrong?”

He sighed slightly, then nudged her arm with his elbow. Despite herself, Jyn leaned a little closer into the contact. “Then you would have handled it.”

If by ‘handled it,’ he meant ‘there would have been Hell and Jyn Erso to pay,’ then yes, she supposed she would have. Still, it seemed like a surprisingly reckless thing for him to do. Had he always been so careless with his own safety?

“However did you manage before me?” She asked dryly, only half joking. The teenagers at the bridgehead burst into sudden laughter, and Jyn glanced at them, her attention torn between the crowd and Cassian’s face.

Her partner shrugged, and his mouth pulled up in a half-smile. “Sheer dumb luck, I suppose.” He stepped a little closer as they came to the narrow bridge, and Jyn allowed herself to brush against his side, because they had to make room on the bridge for others, and she  –

“Them!” A high, young voice shouted, and Jyn whipped around to see one of the teenagers – female, Human, _shit, it’s_ _the brat from the tea shop_ – pointing at Jyn and Cassian, her voice shrill and her eyes narrow. Cassian, standing between Jyn and the girl, instinctively shied back, away from her pointing finger.

Jyn dropped to one knee, and barreled into Cassian’s side, throwing her arms around him and crashing them both to the ground. Blaster bolts whistled through the air where their heads had been only moment ago, but Jyn didn’t wait for the shooters to adjust their aim. She heaved her weight to the side, rolling both herself and Cassian behind the heavy metal cage of the jeweler’s shop. Her back rolled up hard against the trashbins she'd noted earlier, and the metal cans toppled over and clanged against her legs and hip. Jyn curled her spine instinctively around Cassian's torso, kicking blindly at the weight of the cans with her free leg. Behind them, the teens had scattered, shrieking. Cassian scrambled out of her grip as she struggled to clear the trash, and pulled himself up to his knees, his blaster already out and firing back at their attackers. Jyn finally pushed herself up, too, peering around Cassian’s shoulder to get a visual on the threat. It was the workers, four Humans and a Twi’lek, kneeling behind a nearby shop and a kiosk in the middle of the street as they fired on the rebels. _Not Imperials_ , she had time to think, watching one of the Humans fumble in his belt for a recharge pack. His movements were jerky, unpracticed, and an Imperial soldier would never have started a fight with a blaster already close to empty. The fool’s hands fumbled as he tried to jam the ammo pack backwards into his pistol, until Cassian leaned smoothly around the corner of the shop and shot him in the head.

Three Humans and a Twi’lek. Unfortunately, at least two of them were decent shots, and the other two laid down enough blanket cover fire that Jyn and Cassian couldn’t pick them off quickly. Jyn grabbed the now empty trashbin and hurled it around Cassian's side towards the attackers, forcing at least one of them to duck back behind the kiosk. Cassian took advantage of the partial respite to shoot one of the Humans in the leg, but despite the wound the bastard kept firing, although his aim was a little wild. This was taking too long, Jyn thought angrily, trying to aim her own blaster through the slots of the jeweler's bars and debating slipping around the shop to ambush the enemy from the side. She was reluctant to leave Cassian unguarded on this side, though, and she probably couldn't get an ambush staged and completed before –

A wailing siren spiked through the streets, underscored by the distant but distinct sound of heavy boots marching.

Before _that_ happened.

“ _Carnivorous fungi to sprout in your anus_ ,” Jyn snarled under her breath in her most vicious Huttesse. Stormtroopers _._

“We have to go,” Cassian shouted over her head, firing once more over the jeweler’s counter and hitting the Twi’lek square in the forehead.

Jyn braced herself on Cassian’s belt and leaned out around his side, trying not to expose her face to the attackers as she stuck her gun under Cassian's elbow and fired twice. Her first shot was a hair off, but her second clipped the nearest attacker in the upper chest, spinning and dropping him down behind the kiosk. The boots marched closer and the siren wail shook the delicate bridges like glassware in an earthquake. Only two shooters left, one of them with a damaged leg, and if Cassian covered her, maybe she could cross the five meters of open street before they shot her. A direct shot to the male Human’s face and a quick snap of the female’s neck and they would no longer be a threat -

 “Jyn, go!” Cassian reached back and grabbed her shoulder with his free hand, shoving her behind him and back towards the north bridge. “Let’s go!”

“We won’t make it!” Jyn shouted back, leaning hard into his hand and refusing to budge. The shooters would get them square in the back if they tried to run now. The ground rattled under foot, pulsing in time with the precise march of stormtrooper boots converging on them from at least two directions. The ‘troopers would cut them down, too, but Jyn would rather go down fighting ‘troopers than be shot in the back by a bunch of damn _amateurs_.

Cassian shoved again, clearly trying to block out an escape path for her with his body. Outrage burned through her veins, warming her blood even as fear chilled her bones. Was that his plan? Let these fools fill him full of holes so she could get a chance at escaping into the distant, screaming crowd? She grabbed on to his belt again and held on with grim determination. There was no way _, no way_ she was going to run and leave him to this end.

Abruptly, Cassian dropped low behind their cover, twisting on his knees to face her and wrapping one arm around her waist. The move yanked her close to his chest, and his face filled her vision. “Jyn,” he yelled over the whine of blasters and the stomping of boots, “do you trust me?”

She nodded, her heart in her throat. Cassian was so close that she could feel his breath on her face, his nose brushing against her own; if she tilted her head just a little bit higher, her mouth would brush against his. It wasn’t the first time they had been this close, but oh, gods, it might be the last.

“Then please, Jyn,” he breathed, and she shouldn’t have been able to hear him over the cacophony, but somehow his voice cut underneath the noise and burrowed into her chest, curling around her heart like a suit of armor, or a fist. “Jyn, _go.”_

On the last word, Cassian’s arm dropped from around her, and she felt him rise to his feet the exact moment that she exploded to her own, throwing herself towards the bridge and praying to the Force, to her mother, to anyone or anything that might be listening, _please don’t let this be the last time, please don’t let this be the end_.

Behind her, blaster fire, boots, the rattle of the bridges, a soft grunt from Cassian, and then, just in the corner of her hearing, a faint but familiar - _click-_

Oh.

_Fuck._

**_BOOM!_ **

The bridge under her feet heaved a moment before the concussive force of the grenade struck her back. Jyn pitched forward, throwing her arms out to catch herself against the railing. Cold water surged up and over the bridge, yanking at her unsteady feet and soaking her to the knees. Her ears rang and her vision greyed out from the blast, and she clung to the railing with a death grip to stop herself from plummeting overboard and into the black ocean below. The bridge twisted, her body went one way, her stomach went another, and she fought the desperate urge to heave her guts out as the world danced madly.

An eternal moment later, the bridge settled enough to orient herself, but before she could get her feet back under her, Cassian was suddenly at her side. He looped his arms around her waist, she had a brief moment of profound relief followed immediately by an incredulous _you have got to be shitting me_ as her crazy partner launched over the rail and they plunged together into the freezing darkness.

She had another brief moment of panic as the water closed over her head – she could swim, but this water was cold and unfamiliar and worst of all, pitch black. What if she couldn’t find the surface again? What if she got disoriented and swam the wrong direction, down to her own crushing doom?

Cassian’s grip tightened on her ribs, and she realized a beat late that she was thrashing. She forced herself to stop and open her eyes despite the sting of the salt water.

The lights of the floating market shimmered a few feet above them, bright enough that she could just see Cassian’s face under the water; his jaw was set and bubbles billowed up around him like a silvery cloud, but his eyes were calm and reassuring. His left hand was still clamped tightly on the back of her jacket (his jacket), but his right hand reached up and pushed at a thick lock of her hair as it drifted across her face. _We’re okay,_ his eyes told her. _We’re going to make it._

They floated, suspended in the concealing darkness, the warmth of his hands a sharp contrast to the chill of the water, every sound muffled save the beating of her heart. He looked strange in the watery glow, his face all straight edges and carved angles, but his hair flowed around his head in the swirl of gentle currents, and the silvery bubble streams blurred his harsh lines. Everything seemed blurred,for that matter, all the dangerous, sharp corners of the world blunted down and rendered harmless against the promise in Cassian's eyes. It must have only lasted a few seconds, but they were the quietest, softest seconds of Jyn Erso's violent life.

And then they kicked and broke the surface, the chilly air rushing in to bite at her face and comb frozen fingers through her hair. They were under the bridge, and Cassian reached up over her head to brace himself on one of the pylons. The hold kept him anchored in the shadows, out of sight of the ‘troopers that she could hear stomping around on top. The cold water would mask their heat signatures from the infrared scanners embedded in the ‘troopers’ helmets, too. They could hide under here as long as they could stand the water. It wasn't exactly an ideal situation (this is what she got for complaining about how well things had been going), but it was certainly survivable, if they were smart about it.

Cassian’s arm was still around her, hugging her tightly to him, so she felt the shiver run through his body as the roiling water slapped at his shoulders and neck. She shivered too, but wool stayed warm even when it was wet, so it wasn’t as bad as it could be. Jyn wrapped her arms around Cassian’s neck to shield him from the gradually dying waves and took a deep breath, willing her heart to slow down and her lungs to accept that she could still breathe. Her new position reeled her in closer than before, and she tilted her head so that her cheek pressed against his. He shivered again, and she couldn't stop the little voice that whispered _that one was for me._ “Thanks for the sweater,” she murmured, so quietly that even she could barely hear it. “Fashionable _and_ warm.”

She felt him choke back a laugh, and allowed herself to feel relief again. They were okay. They were going to make it.

“They’ll lock the market down for hours,” Cassian replied in her ear after a moment, just as soft. “We’ll have to swim.”

“Stay under the bridges and around the edges of the islands,” Jyn agreed. He nodded, the movement brushing his mouth against her, and Jyn closed her eyes and told herself to stop being such a fool. She could moon about…all this…later, when they were safe – and, if the Force had any mercy at all – dry. 

On the other hand, Saw had taught her to never throw away an opportunity, so Jyn allowed herself to heave a sigh that ghosted warm air down the side of Cassian's neck (and smiled a little, just to herself where no one could see, when Cassian shivered again). "Alright. I'll take point."

"Right behind you," Cassian replied, and Jyn's smile grew a little wider before she wiped it away and reached for the beams overhead. Time to do what she did best - survive.

-

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A [Rybet](http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Rybet) is pretty much exactly what it sounds like: a big sentient frog person. I figure a sea-planet probably attracts amphibious peoples more than any other. Also, they are literally giant frogs who call themselves “ribbets.” I mean. 
> 
> A [Gree](http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Gree_\(species\)/Legends) are pretty fun species, too. Tentacles, anyone?
> 
> The [ Gossam](http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Gossam) are originally native to Castell, yet another Imperial controlled planet on a major trade route. I figure that the trade route means the merchants on Castell tend to spread out along all the major trade lines. Somewhere back “home,” the House of Steam is one of many branches of a successful merchant clan, ruthless in their dealings with others, loving towards their young. Herbert had a very happy childhood, and loves his Mama very much.
> 
> [ Kelsh plating](http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Kelsh) is an actual in-universe thing, apparently a very shiny coppery metal used in clothes and droid plating. Someone once used kelsh-plating [ to disguise themselves as a droid](http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Shaara_and_the_Sarlacc:_The_Skiff_Guard%27s_Tale). So let’s just go ahead and say that it works as an anti-detection material in crates, too, and is commonly used by higher-end smugglers to protect their goods from being accurately scanned.


	3. my words do not form

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  _She was the most beautiful thing_  
>  _I had ever seen_  
>  _and it only took her laugh_  
>  _to realize that beauty_  
>  _was the least of her._  
>  \- atticus

Four hours later, Cassian was just about _done_ with this night. His clothes were still damp, his skin felt clammy and cold, he’d spent hours following vague leads and fighting the small irrational bursts of concern whenever Jyn dropped out of sight, he’d risked poisoning for the sake of yet another vague lead, got shot at, nearly blown up, and just to top it all off, he’d twinged something in his back. Sharp pains ran down his spine and the back of his shoulder like small forks of lightening, and a dull throb radiated up the side of his neck and down into his hip.

“Clear,” Jyn said grimly, sliding around the corner of their battered Ghtroc 440 and striding up the gangplank by his side. She’d insisted on taking the arrival sweep, and Cassian hadn’t bothered to protest. He was trying hard to hide the pain in his back and hip, and he knew that another twenty minutes walking around the space port would give him away. Especially out near the edges of their landing pad, where the duracrete platforms would occasionally and treacherously yawn with large gaps that plunged down towards the sea. "Pressure gates," the engineers called them, designed to let the floating space port move and buckle with the sea during storms. Jyn had snorted and called them "convenient dumping spots," and in his own head, Cassian just called them "traps." In his current condition, with most of his attention absorbed by the screaming in his back and the lancing pains through his leg, he was likely to stumble straight into one. So he didn't complain when Jyn slipped away to sweep the perimeter, and he didn't try to follow her, as he would on any other night. He focused on walking slowly and carefully towards the familiar shape of their ship, and so far he had made it without any more forays into Pillio's endless ocean. Now all he had to do was get up the gangplank, get a quick sonic shower to get the stink of city-polluted salt water off his skin, and collapse into his bunk for a few hours. He could blame any stiffness afterwards on the poor-quality bedding.

“Mosiya’s people?” Jyn asked as the light freighter’s bay door swung shut behind them, sealing them into the quiet darkness of the small cargo hold. Cassian had left the lights on in the narrow passageway leading up to the cockpit and crew quarters, and in the dim glow he could see the tired lines around Jyn’s eyes and the determined way she clenched her jaw against the shivers running up and down her body. Tonight had been hell on her body, too.

“I don’t think so,” Cassian sighed, peeling the wool coat off and throwing them over the nearest crate to dry out. The crates were empty, packed into the hold to serve as “evidence” of Jyn and Cassian’s cover story. If anyone boarded and searched the 440, they would find only a few convincing receipts of legal goods sold and a bunch of empty packing crates. Next to him, Jyn hung his leather jacket up with care and slung the still torn sweater over another crate. She kicked off her boots and tucked them under her arm, unwilling to leave them somewhere out of reach in the event of an emergency. Cassian debated toeing his own boots off, but there was really no way he could do it without bending or kneeling, which would give away how tight and painful his back felt right now. He would wait until she disappeared into her own bunk, where she couldn’t see him.

“Pretty stupid business model, trying to shoot potential customers,” Jyn nodded absently, and he thought she might be watching him from the corner of her eye, but it was too dark to confirm. “So, we’re thinking rival?”

It was so _easy_ to work with her. He’d noticed it the first time, on Jedha, how casually and without comment she had matched her stride to his, how he’d always known where she would stand because it was always the most tactically logical place for her to be. After Scarif, Chirrut had asked Cassian how long he’d been partnered with Jyn, and when Cassian had answered “three weeks,” the Guardian had _laughed_.

“I owe Baze five credits,” the older man had informed him cheerfully. “I thought it was at least ten years. He thought it was between five and eight.”

“We’re thinking rival,” Cassian confirmed, trying to shake the memory of the strange conversation and his own ongoing surprise at how neatly Jyn had fit into his life. “The girl in the shop must have seen the Mosiya medallion and called in her friends, who went after us because they thought we were either Mosiya’s agents or their customers. Either way, our death hurts Mosiya.” Cassian followed Jyn into the small galley near the crew quarters, watching as she reached up into the small cabinet to pull out a couple of tin mugs. He shook his head when she held one up to him; he didn’t need any caf, he just needed to get out of these cold, uncomfortable clothes, and maybe take a handful of low-grade pain pills.

“So,” Jyn said in a casual voice that instantly set all of his internal alarms blaring, “a grenade?”

Ah. Cassian glanced down at his feet and suppressed the urge to fidget. He could understand her concern, however carefully she hid it behind her teasing smirk and light tone. Cassian was a well-trained and experienced operative, used to working in highly dangerous environments with few resources and high stakes. Most of his work involved carefully infiltrating hostile organizations or untangling complex situations, the sort of places and situations that demanded subtlety and delicate handling. Launching a grenade into the air over an Imperial shopping district was about as subtle as a rancor mating dance.

“I timed it to explode in mid-air,” he said after a moment, “so it made more noise and smoke than did any actual damage.” Internally, he winced a little at his own obvious attempt to skirt her implied question. As if Jyn Erso gave a damn about property damage.

She leaned back against the counter and sipped her caf, watching him over the rim of the tin mug with a faintly puzzled air. “Why did you even have one?”

Cassian’s neck and ears grew hot. He was not about to say _because you put yourself between me and threats, and it scares me._ He wasn’t going to admit that he’d grabbed the grenade after she’d slipped a knife in his pocket, because it had occurred to him that she would be short a weapon and it made her that much more vulnerable. He definitely wasn’t going to tell her that he had thrown the damn thing because she refused to leave him behind – again – and he had no idea how to cope with that responsibility.

At last, he cleared his throat and smiled a little weakly. “It, ah, seemed like a good idea at the time.”

Jyn stared at him across the galley, the mug covering the lower half of her face, her eyes thoughtful and dark through the steam.

“I’m racking out,” Cassian said at last, proud at how even and offhand his voice sounded despite the turmoil in his head. “I’ll activate the perimeter alarms, okay?” He left before she could respond, went to the cockpit to hit the switch that powered up the multiple proximity sensors and discrete drone cameras they had positioned all around their landing pad. The tension in his back was starting to compress like a fist clenching around his spine, and Cassian checked that the passageway was clear before letting himself limp the short distance to his tiny bunk. Inside, he slowly, painfully eased his belt and holster harness off, and managed to unbutton and shrug gingerly out of his overshirt after a couple tries. But then he hit a snag – two snags, really. His undershirt was sodden, and clung to his body, and he would have to lift his arms to drag it over his head to get it off. Worse still, he would have to lean or kneel down to get his boots untied and loosened enough to remove.

Maybe he could just take the painkillers and wait for awhile until he felt better (or at least numb), then finish getting undressed.

Twenty minutes later, the pills (over the counter, mild strength only, because anything stronger tended to knock him out or make him fuzzy and he hated the helplessness more than the pain) had still not kicked in. The shirt’s material was still stubbornly wet and freezing cold now that it was exposed to the air without his jacket or overshirt, and making him shiver hard enough to hurt his sore muscles. He sneezed once, then again, and the jerking of his torso sent little stabs of pain down his back and side. His boots felt like blocks of gritty ice. Son of a bitch, he needed to get out of these clothes.

He took a deep breath, and worked his fingers under the hem of his shirt, crossing his arms and slowly pulling the material up. The pain sliced up his side and into his neck, and he barely made it half way before he had to drop his arms and bite back a vicious curse.

Alright, boots first then. He didn’t want to sit on the bunk with his wet trousers, so instead he let himself slide partially down the wall and then carefully lifted one foot up, struggling to keep his balance on his other leg and the wall behind him. His hip screamed at him, but it was moving fine, and his fingertips brushed against the laces for one encouraging second –

And then his balance shifted, he tried to pull it back but the sudden flash of pain through his, _mierda_ , his _everything_ caught him offguard and he crashed to the floor with a muffled yell and a string of furious curses running through his head.

“Cassian? Cassian!”

 _Of course_ , he thought dully, lying on his back and staring at the overhead light as his bunk door flew open. _Of course she sounds panicked. I probably look like a wreck down here_.

“’S fine,” he mumbled as Jyn dropped to her knees next to him, her hands running swiftly over his chest and up to his neck and his scalp, searching for open wounds or obviously broken bones. “Sorry, no, it’s fine, Jyn, I just - ”

“Dizziness?” She cut him off in a clipped tone, holding one finger up in front of his face and peering down at his pupils. “Nausea? Follow my finger.”

“I don’t have a concussion,” he said as calmly as he could muster.

“Follow my finger,” she snarled at him, the undercurrent of worry from before back in her voice with a vengeance. Cassian swallowed the sigh and obediently let her run through the checks for a head injury. She planted a hand on his chest to stop him from getting up as she scanned over his body again, looking for blood. (He hadn’t been planning to move, actually, but her hand bled warmth through the cold material of his shirt, so he didn’t say anything. It was probably pathetic of him. He found he didn’t care.)

Finally, she sat back on her heels and looked down at him. “I fell,” he offered, still lying on his back, wondering quietly if she had noticed that her hand was still pressed against his chest. She had already changed and her hair was dry, meaning she’d probably spent a few minutes under the sonic. He wondered if she still smelled like gun oil and soap, or would he catch a whiff of the sea on her skin, if she leaned down again?

His thoughts were a mess, almost as bad as his body. Maybe he shouldn’t have been cleared for field work. But Jyn had been cleared, and if he had stayed behind, then someone else would have been sent out here with her, and that was just…it was…

 _I am so damn tired_.

“Yeah,” she said softly, “I know.”

Cassian blinked at her. Wait – did he say that out loud? Damn. Damn it all to all the hells.

“Your back hurts, doesn’t it?” Jyn folded her arms and glared at him. The glare bounced off, he could tell there was no real edge to it, but the empty spot on his chest where her hand had been suddenly felt colder than all the rest of him.  He closed his eyes, briefly debated lying, but there really wasn’t any point, was there?

“Aggravated the implants, I think,” he said honestly. “The painkillers should help. And sleep.”

She made a small noise of assent, and then he heard her shuffle back from him, probably going to grab a medkit or something.

Something tugged on his boot, and Cassian’s eyes flew open. He glanced down, ignoring the twinge in his neck as he craned to look – and saw Jyn picking apart his laces and pulling at his boot gently. She moved carefully, like she was handling glass, which simultaneously annoyed and delighted him. One boot, then the other, and then she moved back to his side and held out her hands. “You don’t have to,” he said hesitantly, but the look on her face cut him off.

“You didn’t have to come over and make yourself a target to the Gossam,” her voice was suddenly flat, and she pulled him to a sitting position a little harder than necessary.

Cassian waited a moment for the blood to finish rushing from his head, and then tentatively shrugged his good shoulder at her. No pain there, good. And his other shoulder felt like it was slowly relaxing, not as tight and uncomfortable as before. The pills must finally be working. “It made sense. They were less likely to attack someone with backup.”

She rolled her eyes, and then reached down and grabbed the hem of his shirt. She paused, glanced up at him for confirmation, and Cassian nodded before he could overthink it. He needed the help, she was his partner, it was fine.

“You know I had a plan, right?”  Jyn rose up on her knees and leaned over him, pulling the wet fabric free as delicately as she could, and Cassian managed to get his arms high enough that she could loop it over his head. That was the worst part, but after that it was just a matter of sliding the damn thing down his arms.

Cassian rolled his shoulders experimentally and asked in a dry voice, “Was your plan to come flying up the street, grab my arm, and flee through the crowd?”

She scowled at him, flipping his wet shirt right-side-out again. “No,” she said shortly, although her face said _yes_. Her narrowed eyes suddenly turned detached, her hands businesslike as she shook out the shirt. “I was going to knock Big Guy into the ocean and chuck the biggest tea pot at Mama Gossam. If it was really Wook Lo Kat, she’d have melted into goo, and we could get away clean.”

Cassian stared at her as she reached to grab his wet socks and bundle them up with the shirt. That had to be a joke, but she said it so matter of factly, and with a totally straight face. She didn’t really think that would have – even if that pot had been full of weapons-grade _acid_ it wouldn’t - she probably couldn’t have moved fast enough to take out the Human without – and she was mocking his _grenade_?

She looked back up at him, and her neutral expression cracked. “Your _face_ ,” she choked, clearly struggling to hold back a laugh.

“Very funny,” he grumbled, and scrubbed a hand through his hair, wrinkling his nose at the gritty feeling of salt residue on his scalp. The painkillers must finally be working full strength, because the pain in his body had mostly dulled down to a throb, and he rubbed his hair for a full five seconds before his shoulder started to burn from the strain.

“What was your plan, anyway?” Jyn twisted on her knees and shoved the sloppy pile of fabric into the laundry box built into the bulkhead. “Walk up and smile at the gangsters until they became your best friends and told you everything?” The position twisted her body a little closer to him, putting her torso perilously close to his face. Cassian looked away as much as his stiff neck would allow…and then abruptly turned back, tilting his head and watching her face. In his chest, his heart skipped and then sped up, and a shiver that had nothing to do with cold ran through him – that fine golden thread in his bones, pulled taut and trembling. A quiet voice in the back of his head whispered that there was still time to look away, still time to hide before she noticed.

“Something like that,” he murmured, and his lips tasted like salt when he ran his tongue over them. Damn, he thought he’d broken himself of that habit.

“See, _I_ was only joking, but you actually mean that, don’t you?” Jyn slapped the laundry box door closed and glanced down at him. “The worst part is that it probably would have - ”

Her eyes met his, and he saw her register their positions – him sitting with one knee drawn up, her kneeling over him, only a handspan or so between them – and she froze. Guilt, uncertainty, and something stubborn and hopeful warred in Cassian’s head. Was this pushing too hard? Was he misreading the silent lines of trust and warmth and, dare he even think it, _desire_ strung out between them all these months together? On the other hand, if he pulled away, would she see that as rejection? Was she just waiting for him to…well, to meet her eyes like this?

The only way to know was to stop looking away.

Jyn took a deep breath, and the movement seemed to ripple through her whole body, still curved over him in the tight confines of the little shipboard cabin. Cassian shivered again, and it was only partially the fault of his damp skin in the cool air. “You need to get out of those wet clothes,” Jyn said a little blankly, clearly not really paying attention to what was coming out of her mouth, obviously only responding to Cassian’s chill. She grimaced immediately, a faint pink flush blooming along her neck as she realized what she’d said. He knew she hadn’t been thinking anything suggestive when she said it, but still, the slightly husky note in her voice sent the words flaring down Cassian’s spine like fire, the heat coiling in his lower body and sending his heartrate into overdrive.

Cassian’s mouth quirked up into a small smile, and he let it. “Definitely,” he agreed mildly, and watched her blink at him in confusion as she tried to work out if he was teasing her or not. He could let it go, he knew, sit here quietly and wait for her to back off on her own (or come closer, if that was what she…well, he wouldn’t object). If this interaction was part of a mission, he thought abruptly, he would already be working to extract himself. He didn’t do soft ops, preferring friendly charm and setting people at ease to the more intimate (and significantly more risky) seductions that some of his colleagues pulled off from time to time. He was much better at vanishing than he was at inciting someone’s passion, and it was usually the safer, smarter option.

But Jyn wasn’t a mark, and this wasn’t about getting something from her. It was about –well, he wasn’t entirely sure what it was about. The word for it eluded him, and the sensation of looking up and seeing the mingled look of embarrassment and amusement warring in Jyn’s face was wholly new to him. He knew what people might call it, out in the galaxy where they grew up in one place and went to school and then to work and came home to their families every day. But whatever was hanging in the air between him and Jyn right now, it was foreign and nameless to him.

He wanted it anyway.

Cassian gestured down at his bare feet, and then at his bare chest, hoping that the movement looked casual instead of tentative and uncertain as he felt. “Thanks for your help,” he paused, then looked her right in the eye (and swallowed back the shock at his own audacity), “undressing me.”

“Yeah,” she said a little vaguely, and then her mouth twitched and her eyes turned just a little bit wicked, and Cassian’s heart might well explode at this rate. He found himself struggling to regulate his breathing, unconsciously using techniques usually reserved for talking his way out of Imperial scrutiny or keeping calm in a sniper’s nest. “Always happy to help.” ( _Did her eyes just flick down…?_ ) “Are you,” she paused, cleared her throat with a tiny sound that he could barely hear over the rush of his own blood, “are you sure you’ve got a handle on the rest?”

No, no he did _not_ have a handle on it, not on anything at all, and for the first time in his life, that didn’t feel utterly terrifying. Cassian opened his mouth to answer, he had no idea how, probably something inane, but the words evaporated out of his mouth before he could manage it. Jyn tilted her head at him, waiting for a response, and in the pale cabin light her eyes suddenly seemed lighter and softer than usual. He’d seen that look before, weeks ago in the hangar of Yavin IV, only he’d been looking down at her rather than up. Her face was still a little flushed, even though she was doing an admirable job of keeping her expression calm. If she weren’t so close, Cassian conceded privately, he might have a hard time reading her. As it was, he could see the gentle upward tug at the corners of her mouth, the softer lines around her eyes, and most of all, the rapid flutter of her pulse in her throat. The sight pulled his attention like a magnet – her heart was beating almost as fast as his, and yet there was no fear in her face, no anger in her body language.

Understanding uncurled inside him like a wisp of smoke over a newly-born fire – she wanted this, too.

Out of the corner of his eye, he saw her left hand lift, hovering a few centimeters from his shoulder. The skin on his shoulders and neck itched in anticipation, the intensity of it startling him into holding still rather than leaning up to meet her halfway. At the same time, it occurred to him that if he shifted forward, he could press his mouth to that fluttering pulse on the side of her neck. If he did, the odds seemed good that she would let him.

“Cassian?” The husky note in her voice was underscored by a quiet hesitation, and he shifted his attention from her throat to her eyes again. “You know that…” The corners of her mouth turned down a little as she hunted for words. Despite his best efforts to drag himself back to some semblance of professionalism and self-control, Cassian’s traitorous mind started wondering exactly what it would feel like to kiss her, right there where her mouth curved and –

“You know that I’m with you, right?” she breathed into the rapidly closing space between them.

He nodded, because if there was anything he believed in any more, it was that.

“Right, and I just – you shouldn’t - ” she made a small disgruntled noise in the back of her throat, frustrated with her inability to express whatever she was trying to get across to him. Cassian had enough self-preservation to know better than to tell her that it was unbearably cute when she made that sound, but he could admit it to himself.

“I’m supposed to be backing _you_ up,” she laughed, self-deprecating and a little sarcastic. Her hand near his shoulder turned palm up, a helpless, humorous gesture of exasperation. “You know, watching your back, not painting a kriffing target on it.”

The cold suddenly seemed to creep into his skin, biting at him with serrated teeth. _You have to make it, mate_ , Alban yelled across the battlefield and all Cassian’s long years of working alone. _If you say this is the big one, Andor,_ Melshi grunted, holding up a hand to stop Cassian’s earnest explanation, _then me and the boys are right behind you, and damn the council, eh?_ The vault doors sparked and hissed as they fused shut, and in his ear Kay’s voicebox was clearly damaged but not afraid as he ordered Cassian to _climb_. _You can still send the plans to the fleet. Climb._

In the tea shop, Jyn darted around Cassian to stand between him and the huge Human with Castellan killer tattoos covering his body.

He felt suddenly like he was underwater again, floating with the cold ocean crushing in on his lungs and freezing his limbs. He struggled to push his next words out evenly, keeping his eyes on hers despite the instinct to turn away. “Can’t it go both ways?”

The humor in her face faded, not turning angry or dismissive as he feared, but certainly not as light as it had been a moment before. Instead, she looked at him contemplatively for a long moment, and then slowly settled back on her heels. Cassian felt the loss of her nearness, the loss of even her distant warmth, more keenly than he was willing to admit.

“Yeah,” she said after a moment, “Guess so.”

The silence stretched between them, and Cassian used the time to get his heartrate back under control, time to re-order his chaotic thoughts and stow the unbidden memories of the people who had already paid the price of backing him up.

When he felt more like himself again, down from the giddy high of a teasing, flushed Jyn Erso so close to his face, Cassian climbed up slowly from the floor. His leg felt stiff and sore as if he’d been hit by a crowbar, and his back sincerely hated the twisting motion required to push himself up. His shoulders felt reasonably loosened, though, and the ragged pain of before was mostly under control. Shower and rest, he told himself sternly. He needed to be functional for the rest of the op, after all.

Jyn looked up at him from where she still knelt on the floor. Cassian offered her his hand, and she took it silently, although when she rose, it was with hardly any of her weight on his grip. For a fleeting moment, Cassian pictured himself tightening his fingers and pulling her forward, maybe just pressing a soft, grateful kiss to her cheek, something to let her know that he hadn’t pulled back because she had done anything wrong.

Before he could do it, though, a high-pitched, insistent chirping echoed down the short corridor from the cockpit. Jyn caught his eye for a brief moment, and then they dashed to the control console there. Jyn got there first, and Cassian didn’t bother waiting for her to move out of the way, he simply leaned around her to enter a series of commands to prep the engines for immediate start-up while Jyn called up the security drones they had placed around their ship.

“North side, next to the starboard engine” she told him, sliding into the copilot seat and giving him room to maneuver into the pilot’s chair. “Three sentients. They triggered the proximity alert, but not the weapons’ scanner.”

Unarmed attackers didn’t sound like much of a threat, but then, they had set their proximity sensors very close to the hull. No one had any legitimate business being so near someone else’s ship, particularly on the side without any access doors or viewports, unless they were up to no good. Cassian paused the engine start-up sequence just before he flipped the ignitor switch. Jyn turned her screen towards him so he could see their intruders. Three young Humans, one of which looked suspiciously familiar, were creeping down the side of the ship, glancing over their shoulders and occasionally poking at the hull itself.

Jyn selected one of the tiny mobile drones that Cassian had helped her build, piloting the hand-sized floater along the hull overhead the kids with her console controls. “That kid was with the brat at the market,” she pointed at the familiar one on her screen. “The teens who pointed us out to the gunmen.”

“Mosiya’s rival uses adolescents as scouts,” Cassian grit his teeth, sour anger coating his tongue. It wasn’t an uncommon move among criminals, and honestly, it was a bit hypocritical for him to be so sensitive about it – after all, he’d been a fully fledged soldier and spy with multiple high-risk missions under his belt by the time he was sixteen. It felt different, though, a teenager fighting for survival was different from a kid running into danger for the sake of some smuggler boss’s profit. At least his superiors had valued his life, and worked just as hard as he did in environments just as dangerous -

“Untrained,” Jyn said critically, cutting into his uncomfortable thoughts. She watched the youths shuffling along their hull, her eyes narrowed and her arms crossed. “Look how they’re bunched up. They have no coordinated sweep, either, just keep looking in random directions. They’re avoiding the port security cameras, but it hasn't even occurred to them that we would have our own set up.” She shook her head and added under her breath, “ _amateurs_.”

“They look like they’re just here for recon,” Cassian said after a moment, as the teens worked their slow, awkward way towards the cockpit. Jyn followed with her little drone, slipping it under the hull and positioning it carefully in one of the little niches where the plates of the hull came together. It would be difficult for even a trained and seasoned observer to find; these rookies didn’t have a chance. They were probably directly below his feet right now, and seemed to be under the impression that this made them invisible. The familiar one from the market pulled out a disposable holocam, snapping holos of the area, and the other two fidgeted as they looked around. What, he wondered, was the purpose of this?

“Their boss told them to scope the area,” Jyn said, as if she could read his mind ( _Force_ , he hoped not). “Bet they think they’re high-tech super spies.” She shot him a grin, and he felt a knot in his stomach that he hadn’t even noticed was there relax. She didn’t seem hurt or angry with him at all. Good.

“They aren’t even imaging the ship,” Cassian muttered, as if this sloppy reconnaissance work offended him. Jyn’s grin grew sharper, and she pointed at the screen again. Cassian followed her gesture in time to see the teen with the holocam look directly up, and snap an image of the underside of their cockpit. He groaned slightly, putting a hand over his eyes. There was nothing on the underside of the cockpit, no markings or hatches or even welded seams, nothing that would be remotely useful. That image was probably nothing but a solid square of dirty grey.

“He took another one,” Jyn informed him brightly, clearly enjoying his incredulous reaction. “Probably as back up, in case the first one didn’t come out. And now he’s imaging the landing props,” she added. “Very closely. I bet that will be very interesting to his boss.”

Sure, if his boss has a passion for the factory-standard landing props of twenty-year old light freighters. Which was highly unlikely. “Kids,” he said flatly.

“I think that one is singing his own theme music,” Jyn said, and Cassian snapped his eyes open to see her camera feed zoomed in on one of the other kids, watching his mouth move absently as the boy stared out at the spaceport. It took Cassian a moment to read the boy’s lips – no, she was right, they were the lyrics to a popular song on this planet, and the kid was tapping his foot in a slightly arrhythmic beat.

“That’s it,” he stood up. “I’m going to scare them off.”

“Your chest hair isn’t that frightening, Andor,” Jyn said dryly, and he huffed a little, another knot relaxing in his gut at the reaffirmation that they were still okay. Silently, though, he reminded himself to swing through his cabin and grab a shirt before he went outside. And shoes. “Before you run off to traumatize a bunch of teenage brats,” she went on, refocused the camera lens, “look at this.”

Cassian leaned over her shoulder, bracing himself on the back of the copilot’s seat, and saw what she was pointing at with the camera. The third youth had a silver medallion slung around his neck, a triangle with saw-toothed edges, as if something with sharp teeth had been gnawing on it. In the middle of the triangle was some kind of animal paw print. Cassian had seen that symbol before. Ignoring the protest in his back, he reached down and tapped the console next to Jyn’s hand (she stilled, but did not pull away), and brought up their mission files. He flicked through the pages until he came to “Persons, Agencies, or Organizations of Relevance” and scrolled through the list of various known smugglers, thieves, and conmen until Jyn suddenly reached up and grabbed his wrist.

“There,” she said, jerking her chin at the screen, and Cassian would have pulled back but…alright, damn it, he really liked how her fingers felt curled around his wrist. ( _There, that wasn’t so hard to admit, was it?_ )

On the screen, the serrated triangle marked with a paw print hovered over a short paragraph and an image of a surly looking Human male, short, pale, with a dark beard cut close on the sides but long around his mouth, the end of which was cut into a distinct forked shape. “Dan Crev,” Cassian read. “Local glitterstim runner for a few years, recently tried to branch out into the spice market.”

“That went well,” Jyn pointed at the list of arrests and the “Known Associates” column, which became considerably shorter after the crime boss’s ‘transition.’ “He lost most of his product and his people, and spent a couple years in low-security on Rishi.”

“Rumors claim that when he came out, he decided to get into gun running, instead.” Cassian sighed, and slumped a little against Jyn’s seat. The man had clearly learned nothing from his failure, and if he thought he was going to oust an established and powerful player like Mosiya with a handful of kids and a few poorly trained gunmen, Crev was an utter moron.

“Bet you five creds they go straight back to their boss,” Jyn let go of his wrist and tapped a finger against the console screen, enlarging the security camera feed on the three boys. They were shuffling out from under the cockpit now, back around the starboard side and towards the primary entrance of the spaceport.

“They aren’t even going to use one of the maintenance gates,” he muttered. Maintenance gates were less guarded and had no electronic sign-in logs.

Jyn leaned her head against the back of her seat and craned up to look at him. “Despairing for the next generation of spies, Captain?” The move pinned one of his hands to the back of the chair, and brushed the top of her head against his stomach. His bare stomach.

From this angle, he could lean down and kiss her while still bracing on the chair, which would take the strain nicely off of his sore back.

No, that moment had passed. And besides, he still stank of sea water, and he was probably going to get a headcold or some other inconvenient illness if he didn’t get into dry clothes soon.  Still, the temptation was…strong. “Did your drone drop the tracker on one of them?”

Jyn lifted her finger from the console and pointed to the side, where a small yellow light blinked on an overlay of their city map. As he watched, the little yellow light trailed northwards, up towards the warehouse district.

“So,” she said nonchalantly, her head still on his hand and against his stomach, her face calm as she looked up at him. “Housecall?”

They would never get anywhere near Mosiya if this fool Crev kept blundering into their path. Besides, the man had tried to kill them, and while once Cassian might not have taken that so personally…

Through the cockpit viewport, the sun was finally breaking over the tops of the distant floating skyscrapers, and a bright orange glow gilded the edges of Jyn’s face and ignited tiny sparks of light in her eyes. Cassian drew in a long, slow breath that filled his lungs for what felt like the first time since the Midnight Market. “Sleep for a few hours, first,” he said quietly. “Then, yes. Housecall.”

“Shower first,” she teased, quirking an eyebrow at him.

He laughed again, but before he pulled away and went back into the cabins, he flipped his hand under her head. Jyn startled as he cradled the back of her head in his palm, but didn’t pull away, and the golden sparks in her eyes seemed somehow to grow brighter (poetic nonsense, but he didn’t even care - oh,he was far, far gone, wasn’t he?).

“Jyn,” he said, and smiled at the way her eyes widened. “You know I’m with you, right?”

Jyn smiled, and Cassian was breathless all over again. “Yeah,” she laughed softly. “I know.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The [Ghtroc 440](http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Class_440_freighter) was a light freighter designed to be crewed by 2 and hold up to 4 passengers, and was pretty popular with smugglers. I couldn’t find a floor plan for it, so we’re winging it, as far as “where the bunks are in relation to the galley.” For this story, the answer is “close enough to hear a stubborn man fall over.”
> 
> Jyn's little spy drone is made up, but I like to imagine it's like a little floating webcam (remember those webcams from the early 2000s? They looked like plastic eyeballs? Just me? Ah well.)


	4. so let me kiss

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry this is a day late, Sempaiko! Here's the final chapter, and the fulfillment, at last, of your prompt.
> 
> -
> 
>  _She wore a smile_  
>  _like a loaded gun._  
>  \- atticus

-

The Rodian had easily five kilos on Jyn, stood half a head taller, and the spikey metal studs that covered his glossy blue-black leather jacket and trousers made him look to the untrained eye like a deranged murderer. The spikes were pretty inconvenient, Jyn admitted to herself as she clamped her elbow tighter around the flailing Rodian’s throat, because they dug into her arms and chest as she waited for the sleeper hold to finish choking off the blood flow to his brain. But the fool had gone and rounded off the sharp tips, probably to avoid accidentally scratching himself with his own clothing, so the spikes weren’t much more than decorative. Honestly, the whole outfit practically screamed “I get my fashion advice from punk archetypes in dramatic holovids.” Even Bodhi - who was still new to the world of rebellion and mostly understood the underworld from Imperial pop culture products - would have called it overblown. _Amateurs_ , Jyn thought again, leaning back slightly to avoid a wild elbow from the Rodian.

It took roughly seven seconds for the panicking gangster to finally go limp in her arms (gangster wannabe, really, but Jyn was trying not to be too judgmental; it clouded the mind). “Three,” she muttered under her breath as she dragged the man sideways to a humming generator shed that she had already unlocked and jammed him inside. Cassian had done a bio-scan of the warehouse “island” when they had arrived a few hours ago, and since Crev had not apparently bothered to shield his headquarters from even commercial-grade scans, Jyn already knew exactly how many people were in and around this place. The worst part, she thought as she dragged the dead-weight of the Rodian “guard” across the duracrete deck surrounding the warehouse, was that Crev had more people on the outside than on the inside of his warehouse, a good move if your building was shielded because it looked like you had more forces than you did. But stupid as fuck if you didn’t shield, because instead of focusing on slipping past the guards, Jyn now knew that it was more tactically sound to simply wipe them out before heading in.

Cassian had worked out that the patrols were so sloppily laid out, she could neutralize every one of them and have about an hour before anyone inside noticed. So far, it had only taken her about twenty minutes, and she was down to three guards left after the Rodian. She kicked the spiked wannabe carefully behind the generator itself, then stuck a remote controlled EMP tag on the side of the Wookie-sized device.

“That’s the last buzzer,” she said, a note of satisfaction creeping in to her clipped tone.  She’d already left an EMP tag on the other three generators hooked to Dan Crev’s headquarters (the city power grids didn’t extend to the warehouse islands, probably because it wasn’t very cost-efficient). When Cassian hit the switch, the mini-EMPs would take out all four generators at once, and the whole duracrete island would go dark.

Speaking of her partner - “On your left, two floors high, balcony with a green railing, Human, female,” Cassian reeled off in her earpiece, his voice only just audible over the hum of the generator. Jyn flipped a lazy salute over her shoulder towards the north, where he was ensconced in his sniper’s nest on top of the nearest building. She darted across the narrow deck around the warehouse walls and used her momentum to take a flying leap up the side of the wall, just managing to snag the bottom of the second floor balcony overhead.

“Impressive,” Cassian said from where he watched, and Jyn grinned as she swung herself over the rail. She wasn’t entirely sure how well he could see her from the north, actually. The south side of Crev’s lair had better vantage over Crev’s warehouse, but only one bridge connected any of the southern warehouses to his, whereas on the north there were at least three connections between where Jyn hunted and Cassian supported her.

Jyn balanced on the rail of the balcony and eyed the underside of the balcony above her. Cassian had announced he would set up on the northside without an explanation for why he was choosing the less-tactically sound option, Jyn had nodded without asking for one, and neither had commented on it afterwards. She had a feeling that the decision would probably not show up in their after-mission reports, either. If it did, Draven would probably have a fit, or at least give them one of those severe scowls he so excelled at. He wouldn’t even be entirely wrong, although she would never admit it out loud.

“Now,” Cassian’s voice cracked like a whip, and Jyn launched herself upwards, caught the bottom of the balcony overhead, and swung her hips out as hard as she could. Her momentum threw her up and over the railing, and ended with her knee planted directly in a very surprised Human female’s face. The woman dropped like a rock under Jyn’s weight, and Jyn only just managed to grab her assault rifle before it clattered over the edge and down the side of the warehouse.

She ejected the ammo pack from the (cheap, poorly maintained) rifle, and tucked it under the unconscious woman’s arm. “Two,” she breathed, glancing at the warehouse door that lead from the balcony to the interior.

“On your right, one floor down, Bodach’i, coming around the southside corner in five…four….”

 Jyn smirked and leaned on the balcony rail, peering over the edge, her muscles quivering slightly with anticipation. Everything felt sharp and clear to her, the cool salty air, the distant hiss of the waves splashing up against the warehouse base, the faint creak of all the metal bridges connecting each structure to each other – her blood sang in her veins and Cassian spoke calmly in her head, and Jyn figured that even if they were being paranoid and perhaps a little emotional –

“Three…two…go.” Jyn vaulted over the rail and plummeted down, the dark reddish scales of the Bodach’i only appearing between her boots at the last second as the target rounded the corner and walked directly under her falling body. Bodach’i had piss-poor sight but excellent hearing, which was probably why they suddenly raised their pointed face up to stare half a second before she landed on their head. They jerked back, too late to get out from under her but quick enough to throw off her aim point. She landed with a heavy thus on the lizard’s back instead of their head, and sent them both rolling across the duracrete deck. The Bodach’i scrambled to their feet, growling and reaching for something on their waist. “Emergency comm!” Cassian snapped, and she knew without thinking that he was lining up a shot.

“Got it!” Jyn sprinted for the lizard, who hissed and passed over the comm to grab instead an old-fashioned pistol blaster. They had only half raised it, however, when Jyn threw herself on her back and kicked one foot up. The salty spray from the ocean had slicked the duracrete here by the edge of the deck, and Jyn’s momentum slid her the last meter towards her target. Her abrupt change in position startled the Bodach’i, who was slow to shift their aim downwards. By the time they adjusted, Jyn was practically between their legs. She kicked upwards, directly into the soft scales of the lizard’s belly, the last of her slide translating into the force of her boot. The Bodach’i wheezed as they went flying back, and then plunged soundlessly into the ocean below.

“Very impressive,” Cassian repeated, and the warmth in his voice more than made up for the slight chill of laying on the damp deck. Jyn rolled to her feet and darted back towards the warehouse.

“One,” she told him with a satisfied smirk, and decided that even if they were thinking with their hearts rather than their heads, it hardly mattered. They were still damn good at this.

“On the roof, Human, male,” Cassian informed her.

Jyn scowled in his direction a touch dramatically, reasonably sure he could see her face from this angle. “You couldn’t have mentioned that when I was already half way up?”

“Actually, I was hoping you would wait for me. Camera, your left, three meters high.”

Jyn heard the faint whir of the security camera and slid right, hiding herself under a fire escape that ran up the side of the building, and was one of the only places where at least two security camera viewpoints overlapped. But Cassian murmured “clear” as soon as she ducked underneath it, which really negated the point of the cameras, didn’t it?

She couldn’t see around to the north from her new position, however, so she contented herself with watching the glimmer of the first few evening stars on the surface of the nearby waves. “You found our way in?”

“Roof entrance, one guard, one camera, and the comm transmitter antennas right next to it.”

Jyn snorted. “So someone could take out his roof, his comms, and one of his guards with a single grenade.”

“I was thinking we could go in a bit quieter than that,” Cassian sounded just a little bit sheepish, and Jyn smiled at the starlit waves.

“I thought you liked grenades.”

“They’re not my go-to strategy.”

“What, throwing grenades to escape difficult situations?”

“One time” he grumbled, “I did that one time.” Through the comm, she could hear the faint scrape of his jacket against duracrete as he broke down his nest and started to move. “I’m coming around the northwest bridge. Ten minutes.”

“Northeast bridge is closer to me. There aren’t any cameras on that one, either.” Jyn scowled in professional distaste. “There aren’t any cameras on any of the bridges.”

“And that’s on top of his non-overlapping perimeter patrols and untrained guards.” His voice reflected her disgust. “The only reason I can imagine Mosiya hasn’t taken him out yet is that he doesn’t pose enough of a threat to her.”

Jyn tapped her fingers idly against her truncheon, watching the rolling waves of the sea. _Her_ , she thought. “You’re thinking the Gossam is Mosiya?”

“Or a very highly-ranked lieutenant, maybe Mosiya’s second in command. She implied that she wouldn’t even tell Mosiya about us until we were “proven.” Everything in the smuggler’s profile indicates that they run a very tight organization. Not likely to give away that kind of discretionary power.”

“And she had a bodyguard,” Jyn nodded thoughtfully. Something moved in the shadows by the generator to her right, so slight that she might have imagined it. Casually, she slid her hand a little higher on her truncheon, resting it loosely on the handle and keeping her gaze out to sea. “And Big Guy was definitely not your run-of-the-mill hired muscle.” She flipped a lock of hair from her face, which conveniently allowed her to turn her head right for a quick moment, scanning the shadows through her eyelashes. Nothing. “Guess it’s possible you’re right.”

“Thank you,” the shadow said from a meter to her left, and Jyn bit the inside of her cheek to stop herself from jumping in surprise, “for your overwhelming confidence.”

“Mhm.” She made a show of turning to face him calmly, refusing to let him see that he had successfully snuck up on her. The slight smile on his face that was just visible in the starlight told her that he knew anyway. She narrowed her eyes, then deliberately looked up the side of the warehouse. “You lead, or me?”

“You lead,” he stalked to her side under the fire escape, dropping his voice and leaning out slightly to follow her line of sight up the building. “I’ll blow the generators just before we go over the top.”

Which would both plunge the building into darkness, and also kill the few alarms and security cameras that Crev had bothered to set up. Jyn nodded. “I get the guard, you get the antennas,” she said, and without thinking turned her head to look over her shoulder at him.

Cassian was looking down at her, his chest almost touching her back, his face only a few centimeters from hers. The fire escape blocked out most of the already weak starlight, so she couldn’t see more than the outline of his features…but she could feel the soft brush of his breath, and she could swear that his lips were close enough to her cheek that her skin burned with the phantom touch of them against her.

“If we move fast,” he said in an oddly rough voice. He paused, cleared his throat, and then went on, “if we move fast enough, we can get to Crev before he even knows we’re in the building.”

Jyn hesitated, and then nodded again. The movement tilted her head towards him, and now she did feel his lips brush against her skin, the lightest touch against her temple. She pulled away, and waited to see if he would chastise her, or maybe pull further away. For a long, quiet moment broken only by the hiss of the waves and the hum of the nearby generator, he simply stood still behind her. Just as she was about to shake it off and turn towards the wall, she felt him shift his weight.

“Ready when you are,” he whispered, his mouth shaping the words just along the edge of her cheekbone, his breath ghosting through the loose strands of hair around her face. Jyn couldn’t catch the violent shiver that ran through her body at the touch, and she thought she felt him smile before he shifted away again.

 _Right,_ she thought hazily. _Right. We’ll deal with that…later. Idiot smuggler first, idiot hormones second._

“Stay close,” she ordered a bit more brusquely than she meant, and jumped up to catch at the edge of a boarded-up window. There was a perfectly aligned set of them all the way up the side, with jutting ledges and solid-looking handles on the covered glass. It took them less than three minutes to climb it, and the security cameras were all positioned so that they could do so without the slightest fear of discovery. Privately, Jyn felt that if they weren’t on a time schedule to find Mosiya, they could simply have waited a few more weeks until Crev’s fledging weapon-running operation inevitably fell to some competitor, or collapsed in on itself.

She paused just under the edge of the roof, listening to the scuffling footsteps of the restless guard, who mostly seemed to be pacing along the east side of the building. An unfamiliar irregular beeping noise gave her pause, however, and she glanced over at Cassian as he hoisted himself up beside her on the ledge, hunched a little to keep his head from rising up above the roofline. Jyn tapped her ear and then pointed upward. What was that sound? Some kind of scanning device? A weapon? It wasn’t regular enough to be a bomb, unless Crev had gotten ahold of something really odd. Slowly Jyn pulled out her blaster. Taking the roof quietly was all well and good, but if there was something really dangerous up there –

Cassian grabbed her wrist lightly and shook his head, pushing her blaster back into her holster. She frowned at him, but he tightened his grip on the window latch and leaned to speak into her ear (damn him, she had _just_ managed to force back the last of her reaction on the ground). The move made him lean perilously far out from the side of the building, and Jyn hastily locked her blaster back into the holster and looped her arm around his side, clutching at his coat firmly.

Cassian’s lips were so close to her ear that she could feel them move as he whispered so quietly that she could barely hear, “Video game.”

Oh, for fuck’s sake.

He pulled back, grinning at her clear irritation, and then held up a small activator in his free hand. Jyn, still glowering, nodded sharply. He pressed it, and suddenly the hum of the generators went silent. The glints of light seeping through the boarded up windows also went out, and Jyn heard the distinct whine of a nearby security camera powering down.

The irregular beeping on the roof continued unbroken. _Spirits of Force and fuck, where did Crev unearth these people?_

Jyn didn’t wait for the roof guard to cotton on to current events – she flung herself over the edge and pounded towards the glow of the datapad screen. The guard, barely more than a teenager himself, whirled in shock, the game falling from his hand to clatter on the ground. It had barely toughed the duracrete when Jyn backhanded him hard across the face. He spun and crashed towards the ground, but Jyn stepped in close and caught his shirt, hauling him back up before he landed. The kid staggered, and Jyn jerked him down, forcing him to kneel. She loomed over him, dragging him by the shirt until his face was a few centimeters from hers. “Whatever the hells Crev’s paying you,” she snarled, giving his collar a rough shake, “it’s not enough.”

The kid’s mouth hung open, his eyes wide and his face bloodless. “Pl-please don’t kill me,” he whimpered, and Jyn curled her lip up to let him see the gleam of her teeth.

“Next time I see you,” she growled, sinking as much menace into the words as she could, “ _I will_.”

Behind her, the distinct _crack_ of an antenna snapping in half made the kid jump even harder. Jyn gave him one last shake for good measure, and then she shoved him towards the fire escape. The cameras were dead now, Crev would never see him go. “Go home,” she ordered, and rolled her eyes as the kid tripped and nearly pitched himself down the stairs. He caught himself against the thin metal railing, which creaked ominously but held, and she could hear him thundering down the stairs like a terrified bantha.

Beside her, Cassian laughed softly. Jyn let the snarl on her face relax, and she shrugged at him. “What?”

“Twelve guards,” he knelt by the door, the gleam of his lockpick in his hand. “And no casualties.”

His voice was light, but he kept his face turned away from her. Jyn knew why, too – if he’d been on his own, the tactically sound thing to do would have been to shoot every guard from his sniper nest, and then infiltrate the building. She knew Cassian well enough to know that he would have done it, too, if he thought it necessary – and he would have hated himself with every pull of the trigger.

But he wasn’t on his own, Jyn thought fiercely. And for once, they didn’t have to kill their way out of this problem. She opened her mouth to tell him that, because it felt important that she did…but the lock on the door clicked, a sharp, metallic little sound that derailed her fragile train of thought.

“We’re in,” Cassian tucked away his lockpick and pulled his blaster free, snapping it into the rifle configuration with precise, practiced moves.

Later, she reminded herself. “I’m lead,” she said instead, maneuvering to stand in front of him and pulling out her own blaster. She saw him frown from the corner of his eye, but it made more sense for her to go in first – she was better at hand to hand, in the event that someone jumped out at them. And he could shoot over her head, in narrow quarters. All the same, she tensed, prepared for him to argue.

“Crev should be two floors down,” Cassian said instead with a note of resignation, and Jyn touched his arm briefly before heading into the darkness of the warehouse.

It was the most… _anticlimactic_ raid of her life. Jyn and Cassian moved methodically through the stacks of old crates and haphazardly parked forklifts, and Jyn had been prepared to have to fight at least a few of the ten people the bioscan had shown inside. But all they could hear in the darkness was the shouting of angry people arguing, and someone with a high-thin voice demanding that the rest “shut up and go see what’s out there!”

After a few minutes, Cassian tapped Jyn’s shoulder, and she obediently dropped to one knee. He raised his rifle and fired three short blasts towards the ceiling. Instantly, the arguing voices went silent. “Crev, you son of a cur,” Cassian shouted in a vicious tone that echoed around the mostly empty warehouse, turning it into a howling, furious chorus that assaulted the ears from all directions. “You have two minutes to drag your filthy hide out here, you spineless worm, or I burn down the building!”

Jyn choked a little, glancing back over her shoulder to Cassian’s dimly-lit silhouette. He met her gaze, dropped his voice back to a casual undertone, and shrugged. “What?”

“You fucking cowards!” the high-pitched voice shrieked suddenly from the other end of the warehouse. Jyn heard the distinct slamming sound of a door flying open, then the much less distinct – but still unmistakable – rumble of several feet pounding on duracrete before they faded into the night.

Apparently, Crev wasn’t paying _any_ of them enough.

“I don’t know who the fuck you think you are,” Crev screeched at them, but whereas Cassian’s echoes had made him sound threatening and omnipresent, Crev’s echoes were whistling and terrified, a rat trapped in a cage, a gangster boss with no gang. When Cassian didn’t answer him, he launched into a string of creative curses that twisted and whined through the warehouse in an odd way. He must be on the move, maybe trying to escape a different way than his traitorous minions, maybe looking for some of his own smuggled product to use against them.

Cassian tapped her shoulder again and pointed to the left. Jyn nodded, and stalked through the crates in the direction he had pointed, knowing he was looping around to meet her by a different route. Sure enough, as she navigated through the dark warehouse, Crev’s voice grew louder and nearer. The curses had dropped to a steady mumbled stream, lessening the echoes but making it all too easy to find him.

Jyn rounded a particularly rickety stack of crates and found herself looking at a short, pasty Human with a dark, overgroomed beard. A flickering yellow light cast a bright spotlight in the gloom down on his head, making it easy to identify him. He stood with his back to her (with his back to the open warehouse, where he _knew_ he had at least one enemy walking around, _how_ had this man survived so long?), rooting through a box that looked to be stuffed full of older-model rifles.

Jyn pointed her blaster at his back and snapped, “Turn around.”

To his credit, he reacted quicker than she expected, spinning around instantly on his heel with something long and black in his hands that he pointed directly at 

 

_grenade launcher_

The world seemed to slow to a crawl, the air thick heavy as she threw herself to the floor, but _shit,_ it was too late, in the deathly silence the trigger _clicked_ and there was no way she would get out of the blast radius in time, she was going to die a smear on the floor and Cassian –

A flash of green from the right, and then Crev dropped like a stone. Jyn flinched as the grenade launcher clanged loudly to the ground beside him, but the cavernous barrel stayed silent and dark, and nothing whistled through the air to blow her skull to smithereens.

“Jyn!” Cassian barked from the side, his blaster still smoking slightly as he appeared like a wraith out of the shadows. “You alright?”

“Yeah,” she croaked from the floor, then shook herself and rolled up to her feet. “I mean, fine. Thought he pulled the trigger.” She glared at the fallen grenade launcher, pointedly ignoring the blank eyes above the forked beard next to it.

“He did,” Cassian said, his voice sounding much less calm than his face looked. “But he didn’t prime it first.”

She swallowed, then nodded curtly. “Ah. Right.” She should have known that, should have shot the bastard through the heart instead of panicking. Maybe she was a little rusty after all that bed rest and medical leave. Maybe it was lucky Crev had been such an incompetent – to remind her never to drop her guard anyway. It was a good lesson, one she had forgotten a bit recently.

If she’d been on her own, that would have been the last lesson she ever learned.

Across from her, Cassian stood as still as a statue, his eyes trained on the dead man, his hands clenched tight around his rifle. “Well, that’s Crev, then,” Jyn ventured at last, stepping closer and reaching for his arm. “Guess we can get back to finding Mos-“

Cassian slung his rifle over his shoulder, grabbed her wrist, and stepped right into her space. “Tell me again,” he said flatly, looking down at her with a strange expression. “Tell me you’re alright.” From this close, she could see the strain around his eyes and the tight way he held his jaw, and feel the tension in his arm under her hand.

So she hadn’t been the only one to panic a little, it seemed. The revelation was more comforting than she really wanted to admit. Alright. The threat was gone and the mission a success, they could afford to work through this for a minute. Jyn wrapped her arms around Cassian’s waist, rested her head against his shoulder, and let herself lean hard into him. He shifted to catch her weight, hugging her back fiercely, his breathing just a little ragged around the edges.

“I’m fine,” she said firmly, then, “ _we’re_ fine. It worked out. We won, and we got away.”

Cassian’s fingers dug into her back and threaded through her hair, and he turned his face into her neck and took a deep breath. “We’re fine,” he repeated.

Outside, the sound of distant engines suddenly split the quiet night, growing closer by the second. Jyn and Cassian jerked apart, staring at the walls of the warehouse as they began to vibrate in tune to the incoming fleet of airships.

 _“Run!”_ Cassian grabbed her hand and bolted for the back of the warehouse. Jyn kept pace, clutching at his fingers with one hand and her blaster with the other. It was no good, though – by the time they sprinted through the warehouse to the nearest back door, the roaring engines had surrounded the building. She could almost hear the metal bridges creaking and bouncing under the strain of the hovering craft. They were trapped inside, with nowhere to go but into the dark ocean – if they could make it that far.

“Over the side?” Jyn shouted at him, and Cassian nodded grimly, clearly already at that same conclusion.

“Cut right out of the door,” he yelled back. “Fire as you go, and don’t stop until you’re in the water!” Their odds of escaping under the bridges again were low enough to make Kay’s circuits spark in outrage, but it was the best hope they had.

Jyn squeezed his hand one more time, and when he turned to look at her (with that _look_ again, the look he had given her a dozen times now and it destroyed her every time, dark and desperate and gentle all at once), she forced herself to smile and shout, “Could have used a grenade right about now!”

Cassian lunged forward and kissed her. It was hard and fast, a brief, desperate press of his mouth to hers, and he was already pulling away before her mind had even processed his movement, but it felt like a wildfire suddenly flaring inside her, stealing her breath and setting her blood alight. Inanely, a part of her mind cried _that’s not fair!_ But there was no time to react, no time to think, Cassian threw the door open and flung himself outside, and there was nothing to do but dash out after him.

There was a shuttle parked directly in front of the door. Cassian slammed to a halt, and Jyn nearly crashed into his back. There was no way they could get to the water, not with that thing hovering a meter in front of them. The side door of the shuttle was open, and half a dozen grim-faced sentients lined up in the opening, each of them holding a different heavy-duty projectile weapon and an expression that told her they knew how to use it. Two more shuttles flanked the lead, also open and displaying a truly impressive variety of weaponry. From the sound of it, several more shuttles hovered just around the corners of the warehouse.

They were, it seemed, truly and completely fucked.

“Gentle seas to you,” a voice boomed out over the roar of the shuttles, and then a huge bald man with black tattoos nearly covering his shiny skull shouldered his way into view on the lead shuttle.

Jyn, straining to see over Cassian’s shoulder, nearly did a double take. Big Guy from the tea shop raised one hefty arm, and all three of the shuttles suddenly lowered themselves to the deck, shutting off almost instantly. The armed guards never flinched, but Big Guy stepped lightly from the shuttle to the deck and stopped a few feet away from Cassian, arms folded and his face speculative. Jyn darted around to stand at Cassian’s side, and folded her arms, too. When in doubt, play along. She swept Big Guy with her best unimpressed expression, and tilted her chin up challengingly.

He didn’t react, but she could have sworn he looked amused. In the relative quiet, Cassian suddenly called, “So are we proven, then? Will Mosiya speak with us now?”

Big Guy nodded slowly, and Jyn wanted to shoot him. Nowhere lethal, of course, maybe somewhere in the leg. The big bastard had been watching them the whole time, probably with bioscans of his own, or long-range cameras, who knew? Mosiya must have decided to see how they handled Crev, as a test of character or intention or what-the-fuck-ever. It would feel really, really good to shoot this guy. On the other hand -

 _Wrinkly bantha ballsacks_ , that was a _lot_ of weaponry on those shuttles. High-grade, black market, untraceable weaponry. No wonder Command wanted to get in touch with this possibly-anti-Imperial smuggler so badly.

“I hope we live up to her expectations,” Cassian said with a touch of dryness. From the way he spoke and (she glanced sideways up at his face to check) the way he looked, no one would ever have known that five minutes ago, he’d thought they were both facing capture or death.

Big Guy’s expression flickered, just slightly, the corner of his mouth twitching, and suddenly Jyn _knew_.

“You used your _mother_ as a frontman?” She unfolded her arms and propped them on her hips, a move that her own mother used to pull on her when she was a naughty child. It had never failed to make Jyn uneasy and a little bit guilty. She watched with some sadistic amusement as Big Guy’s shoulders hunched slightly in unconscious defensiveness. Apparently, some types of body language were universal. “Shame on you, Herbert,” she continued, perhaps pushing her luck a little, but still feeling a bit light-headed and giddy from two near-death experiences in a row. “Does she even know that her son is the biggest smuggler in the system?”

Next to her, Cassian was stock still.

“I tried to keep it from her in the beginning,” the big man replied. “Lasted about a month.” He grinned suddenly, and the dull-eyed violent thug from the tea shop vanished, replaced by a shrewd man letting them in on a good joke. “She gave me proper hell when she found out.”

Jyn raised an eyebrow at him. Behind Mosiya, the gunmen stayed stoically with their barrels pointing down at them, but now that she had time to look, she could see that none of the weapons were primed or with their safeties switched off. A display, she realized, not a threat. “And so you made her one of your lieutenants.”

“She’s good at it.” He shrugged, a slightly sheepish tsunami rolling up out of the sea and settling back again. “And if I cut her out, I’d never hear the end of it. She’s been after me to help out the rebellion for awhile, too. Have to say, I’m glad the two of you survived, or I’d have an earful at dinner tonight.” He unfolded his massive arms and made a careless gesture at the shuttles. “After all the effort she put into organizing this for you.”

“And what,” Cassian said slowly, “is _this_ , exactly?”

“What I’m offering,” Mosiya said simply, and as if on cue, all the gunmen turned their weapons sideways, allowing Cassian and Jyn to see the profile of each one. A neatly-planned display, with a nice side of showmanship. Jyn wondered if that was Mosiya’s handiwork, or his mother’s. “We can work out the details, but I’m willing to give the Alliance retail price, plus four percent.”

“Two percent,” Jyn countered immediately, mostly just to see how far he’d let her push. “You hate the Empire, and this is how you hurt them.”

Mosiya grinned again, the expression turning him almost boyish despite the tattoos and the scars. “I do hate the Empire,” he agreed, “but I’ve got hundreds of employees, Alliance, and their families to support. Three percent, but any more than that and I’m taking losses.”

Jyn glanced back at Cassian, who scanned over the array of deadly weapons and then back at her. “Done,” he said. “We’ll have a contract drawn up for you by midnight, if you like.”

“Do that. And bring it down to the tea shop,” he walked back to his shuttle and stepped lightly up. “Mama wants you to try her newest blend.”

He waved a lazy hand, the shuttle doors rolled closed, and all three shuttles flared to life, pulling smoothly up and roaring off into the night. The other shuttles appeared like magic around the sides of the warehouse as they fell into formation, and Jyn watched with wide eyes as almost two dozen of them rode away into the night.

Cassian slumped back against the wall of the now-empty warehouse, raising a weary hand to scrub at his face. Jyn remained where she was, her arms hanging uselessly at her sides as her mind buzzed with all that had just happened. Breaching Crev’s terrible security, Cassian kissing her, getting cocky and nearly getting her head blown off, Cassian kissing her, the sudden terror of being trapped, _holy crap_ _Cassian had kissed her_ , the reveal of Mosiya and the more or less successful completion of their objective…

“You kissed me,” she said suddenly into the now-silent night.

Cassian was silent for a long time, his hand still over his face. Then he sighed and dropped his hand, although his eyes stayed closed. “It seemed like a good idea at the time,” he said softly, the corner of his mouth curled up into a weak smile that vanished almost immediately.

Jyn watched him carefully, slinking closer, choosing her steps and her words with care. He didn’t flinch as she neared him, didn’t even seem to notice, until she was only a few handspans away. “Was that it?” she asked, and watched his eyes fly open in surprise with no small satisfaction. Good, now they were even. “It was just in the heat of the moment?”

 _No,_ she thought, _it wasn’t,_ and they both knew it, but it mattered how he answered. If he wanted to pretend, if he just…wasn’t ready, well, she could deal with that. They had, if not all the time in the world, enough time for that, at least.

“No,” he said at last. “Jyn, do you…” he trailed off, and then flipped his hands over, palms up in a helpless, self-deprecating gesture. “I don’t even know how to ask,” he said quietly.

“That’s okay,” Jyn stepped closer, “I do.” She tilted her head and pressed her forehead against his, smiling as his eyes slipped closed and the tension in his shoulders relaxed. Lightly, she ran her fingertips from his palms up his arms and to his collar, grabbing the thick grey wool and balancing her weight as she rose up slightly on her toes. Cassian’s hands moved tentatively to her hips, touching but not holding. He wouldn’t hold her, Jyn knew, never try to drag her back if she pulled away. Even now, when she was so close and so open to him, he waited, his eyes closed and his hands light.

Jyn pressed her lips against his, just enough to touch, just enough to feel his breath catch. He was so damn warm, and inviting, and just…just Cassian. Solid, trusting and trustworthy, and above all, always _there_. Jyn crowded a little closer, daring to trace the tip of her tongue along the edge of his lower lip, daring to slip her hands around the nape of his neck, daring to arch her back just a little to press against him. She felt him shiver under her hands, felt him draw random patterns up her sides until his fingers slid along her jawline and cupped her face sweetly. The wildfire he had set off in her skin was back in full force, and Jyn felt the reins of self-control slip a little as she pushed closer yet, hungry for the feel of him, thrilled when he gave a quiet little groan in the back of his throat, light headed because _Cassian had kissed her_ and he liked it when she kissed him back.

She had risen up entirely on her toes now, her arms wrapped around his shoulders and her body curved against him, and the distant rush of the ocean waves against the deck blended with the rush of her own blood surging through her, warmest wherever he touched her, the taste of him on her tongue and in her veins now, and –

Her boot slipped on the sea-slicked ground, and she jerked in surprise.

Cassian caught her, but the sudden shift jolted both of them back to reality, semi-exposed on an abandoned duracrete island in the middle of the ocean, with several unconscious gangsters who might well wake up at any moment, and the Force only knew if Mosiya’s people were still watching them.

“Right,” she muttered against Cassian’s neck. “Later.”

“Yes,” he agreed, sounding gratifyingly breathless. “Later. If, ah,” he set her upright so gently that Jyn’s heart ached a little at it, even as another stubborn part of her wanted to shove herself back and prove that she was perfectly capable of finding her own feet. “If you want to,” he added, not quite looking at her.

Jyn punched him in the arm. She pulled it, for the most part, but it was hard enough to rock him a little backwards. He raised an eyebrow at her, and she raised her own right back. “Yes,” she said in a voice that brooked no argument. “I do.” She turned sharply on her heel and marched towards the northern bridge, beyond which was the small underwater rental shuttle that had brought them here.

“Good,” Cassian fell into step behind her. He cleared his throat again, and when he spoke again, Jyn could hear the smile in his voice – and the promise. “So do I.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The Big Damn Kiss at the end was based on [this set of gifs](https://skitzofreak.tumblr.com/post/171023394464/lettingthewaterholdmedown). Hot damn, right?
> 
> I know this was a bit lighter and goofier than my normal fare, but hey, it's Valentine's Day! (Or rather...it was. Very recently.)


End file.
